Virtual Team Building Activities And Games For Remote Teams

For the greatest impact, you need to improve both group dynamics as well as one-on-one dynamics. So, you can plan virtual team building events like virtual happy hours and virtual holiday parties, but also paired opportunities like Mister Rogers Calls. A simple ideas to start with team building virtually is to add a round of icebreaker questions at the beginning of video conference calls. You found our list of fun virtual team building activities. Virtual team building activities are games, challenges and exercises you can do with remote employees to help build stronger bonds.

• A beautiful thing about remote teams is that their point of contact is with people sitting miles away, making them their ultimate friends.
• First, we use the Donut app to randomly assign conversation partners every two weeks.
• This can be done by creating a playlist in Spotify and sharing the link in the team chat.
• This post has themes and topics for virtual coffee chats.
• Your team members can participate in the typing test and post scores to Slack, email or other communication channels.

Take a before screenshot of your desktop, then delete all the files you no longer use and empty the trash. Finally, take a screenshot to show your progress and share it with your team. By starting, you give your team members a little longer to think about answers, and also model what a great answer can be.

You can use personality tests for https://globalcloudteam.com/ too. A virtual activity is any activity that you can do online as part of a team or otherwise. For example, virtual activities include Spreadsheet Wars, Werewolf and Dance Parties. Some virtual activities are nearly identical to real-world counterparts, while others are unique to the virtual format. A virtual book club is an opportunity to connect with like-minded people on your remote team.

In the last few months, sales of dumpling making ingredients in China have skyrocketed; people are cooking and eating at home more often. This love for cooking and eating is generally popular worldwide. One of the nice things about going into an office is the social outlet of being in rooms with other people. For example, you can say hi in the morning, have lunch together, or go for drinks or a meal after work.

What Are Virtual Team Building Challenges?

Even more popular is asking a series of icebreaker questions during the onboarding process when hiring someone new . In fact, in Know Your Team we have a fun Icebreakers feature precisely for this purpose. What better way to escape from the confines of your home and bond with your teammates than by getting stuck into a dramatic and suspenseful murder-solving investigation? Here are a few common questions and answers about virtual team building activities for work. In addition to strong leadership, one of the most effective ways to build team morale remotely is to do games and activities together.

Donut is an app that connects people for a virtual cup of coffee or, as it says, “a chat around the watercooler”. It’s available as an extension on Slack and works great for remote team building. It could also include randomly pairing 2–3 people every week to have a fun video chat over something non-work related. On top of that, 69% of remote workers take part in one team building event per quarter. Virtual team building challenges are spirited competitions or games you play with a remote team.

To play this game, the team moderator divides the team into equal groups. The moderator should display several things and the player should try and memorize the same within 60 seconds. Once the timer hits one minute, he/she should recall the names of as many things as possible. A bucket list is a list of things a person wants to do or experience in his/her lifetime. It could include small victories like learning to fly a kite, or monumental ones like becoming a television host — and then the President of a country. Games takes only minutes and players will be guided through a variety of game types to keep the energy moving and provides an opportunity for everyone to shine.

Establish a book reading group, and chalk out your top picks for the month. After an agreed-upon time period is over, gather together (virtually, of course!) and discuss how you liked the book. To play this game, the team moderator begins the story with a hypothetical phrase such as “If dogs could text” or “If elephants could fly”. He/she then picks the next person who continues the story. This is not yet another knock-knock joke, but precisely how this game will work. Each team will have to take turns trying to guess the personality that’s knocking on their door, based on the hints given by the moderator.

Ready To Spark Life In Your Remote Teams?

Teams of five will take turns guessing the names of these movies or series. The team that does so with the least number of clues wins the game. This personality can be a celebrity or even a person from the team itself! Prior to starting the game, the team moderator can determine the number of clues that each team will get. This cycle is to be repeated until every member of the group shares his/her screenshot.

Instead of just logging into Zoom for a virtual happy hour , level up your team bonding with a few of these tips. Virtual team building activities are a great way to make virtual meetings fun, boost morale and build community. These virtual activities include free and paid options, and can take anywhere from 1 minute to several hours. I recommend following The 8% Rule, which states that you should spend about 8% of the time on any team call doing games and exercises together. Basically, do 2.5x as many virtual team building activities as you do local team building.

Check out our full instructions for lightning scavenger hunts and virtual scavenger hunts. When you’re separated by thousands of miles, bonding and collaborating with colleagues can be a unique challenge. No one knows that better than Okta’s Adrienne Jones and Remy Champion. The following tools will allow your team to work together while working remotely.

Museum Hack leads online storytelling workshops that are fun, fast-paced and surprisingly cool. The participant with the cleanest desktop wins sanity and productivity for the week. You may have seen the trash challenge trending on Reddit or Twitter, but you probably have not Remote Team seen the digital “work from home” version. Spreadsheet Wars is a tiny virtual hackathon, where participants can show off their skills in Google Sheets and similar programs. The survivors debate who the werewolf is, and then vote to either eliminate someone or skip the round.

When we have projects or big meetings, we sometimes fly team members in, and we also plan company retreats. For example, we did a company cruise of the Caribbean that was equal parts business planning and fun. One place to find inspiration for virtual team building ideas is grade school. Typing speed races are a free online team building activity that you can start right now.

For example, if you dedicated five minutes at the beginning of office meetings to icebreakers then your virtual meeting equivalent is 12.5 minutes. If you organized one company offsite each quarter, then you should organize at least two and maybe three virtual off-sites in that same time period. Go Remote is another great company that helps bring together team members from all over the world, hosting gameshows and events for teams as large as 1,500. There are hundreds of virtual activities to choose from. Some of the most fun online team building activities include icebreaker questions, Never Have I Ever, “Can you hear me now? War of the Wizards is a 90 minute virtual team building activity played on Zoom.

Set Scheduled Video Chats

Other companies do week-long retreats three times per year. Balsamiq takes a lighthearted, personal approach to their all-team retreats that focuses on getting everyone together to have a good time. Other company retreats optimize for working together side-by-side, having strategic discussions, thinking through tough problems. If you’re looking to plan a company retreat, here’s an excellent piece Buffer put together about their most recent one. Foster fun and engagement, but this virtual team activity allows coworkers to learn each others’ problem-solving processes in real time.

Typically, a successful player from the round leads the next prompt. Just remember to vary the timing to accommodate people in different time zones. By submitting this newsletter request, I consent to Slack US sending me marketing communication via email. Even online gaming nights work, if your crew is into that—just remember not to exclude team members who might not own the same consoles or equipment.

What Are The Benefits Of Virtual Team Building?

As discussed, many remote companies offer buddy systems for onboarding — but they also implement them as a fun way for every to interact socially and get to know each other better. In fact, in our survey, we found that 51% of remote managers and employees reported having a mentor mentorship program or buddy system. Those serendipitous moments of social connection don’t happen with the same frequency or fidelity when you’re working remotely. As a result, the sentiments of “Ah, we’re in this together” or “You’ve got my back” can be absent on a remote team unless you deliberately foster them.

Your event includes an expert host to guide the game through to a successful conclusion. This community building activity is perfect for anyone that loves role playing games, storytelling, or is otherwise down to get a little nerdy. Here is a list of virtual team building icebreakers, list of icebreakers for virtual meetings, list of icebreaker questions, and a random icebreaker generator.

Lightning Scavenger Hunt Activities

Scavenger hunts are entertaining in person, and they can be just as impactful for team building in a virtual environment. The Team moderator makes a list of common facial expressions and sends it to one person from each group. This chosen member emotes the given expression, while the other members of the group figure out what that is. Well here’s the catch – the usage of hands is prohibited while enacting.

Remote Fm

Having each of your team members share something about their lives also builds meaningful connections. War of the Wizards is a simple storytelling game designed as a team building activity for conference calls. The background of this game is that a group of wizards have been at war since ages past, and at this point nobody quite remembers why. Your team members become the wizards’ minions, and work to develop stories, cast spells and overcome challenges together. The Tree or Bob Ross game mechanics are similar to 20 Questions or Eye Spy and other virtual team builders. To start this virtual activity, one player chooses an identity, which can be anything from an object to a concept.

Give your people fun shared experiences and they will give you a successful team. The Price is Almost Right is a digital team building activity where the host of a virtual conference call holds up household objects and other attendees shout out prices. The first person to guess within five cents of the actual retail price without going over gets 1 point for their team. If you guess over the retail price then you are out for that round, but your team members may continue. Show & Tell is one of the best virtual team building ideas that promotes public speaking skills and storytelling.