The essential ingredients of excellent communication, collaboration, shared goals, and enjoyment can be comprised once you barely meet your colleagues in person. The challenge here for you is, will you be able to keep everything alive?
Creating the most out of the advanced technologies you have is needed if you are currently working with a remote team that spans around the globe and different time zones. You should also hone your capabilities as an employer by adding a dash of inventiveness and modification. Virtual team building activities can transform dispersed remote workers into close-knit groups of committed individuals working toward a common objective.
FAQs
What are virtual team building activities?
Virtual team building activities are used in fostering person-to-person interactions amongst your distant staff members. Forming these relationships can help expedite communication and enhance efficiency while also promoting team harmony. Although the participants are not present physically in one exact location, they communicate online utilizing similar means. Multiple tactics, diversions, and activities for remote team building activities include bringing greater social contact to virtual employees.
How to do team building activities online?
For team building activities, it's essential to create first a friendly environment through small talks. It allows employees to communicate with their colleagues which they seldom do in a remote work setup. Another tip on how to do team building activities online is to get creative and innovative. You can mix and match different activities that will suit perfectly to your team.
What are the top fun virtual team building activities?
Some of the exciting virtual team building activities include:
- The aliens have landed
- Guess whose workspace it is!
- The desert island scenario
- Two truths and a lie
- Picture of your life
- Remote Karaoke
- Virtual book club
- Never have I ever
Why conducting online team building activities is important?
Conducting fun virtual team building activities is important because the gap between remote members needs to be filled. Organizations must promote virtual interactions using team building events, competitions, and drills because remote teams do not have the benefit of in-person encounter time to form bonds.
Virtual employees can get involved and linked to their team and the corporate culture through online team development games and activities. Employees are delighted and highly efficient as a result of these initiatives.
What are the benefits of virtual team building activities?
The benefits of virtual team building activities are:
- It creates a support system.
- It boosts employees’ morale.
- It promotes workforce collaboration.
- It encourages versatility.
- It promotes productivity.
- It reinforces a positive work culture.
- It helps in the betterment of innovation management.
1. The aliens have landed
This game is one of the most enjoyable virtual team building activities that can aid in the strengthening of company culture for employees with language and cultural difficulties. Assume that aliens have arrived on Earth and would like to understand further about your organization. However, because they do not know English or comprehend what you are doing, you must describe it to them using 5 symbols or images.
To a shareable document or folder, request every participant to design five basic graphics that effectively represent and explain your company's products and culture. Take a few moments to go at all of the photographs and discuss the common themes. This is a fantastic trivia play that gets the group chat going throughout a virtual meeting.
2. Guess whose workspace it is!
Working remotely, far from cubicles and homogenous desks, implies that every one of your coworkers now has their own "station," even if they don't have a home office. You can make the most of this rare situation by trying to get to recognize your colleagues more. Request that each employee of your team takes a picture of a component of their workspace that reflects them or their character.
Organize a conference meeting after everyone has contributed their photos. Share your screen with your colleagues and have them identify which object relates to which group member one by one. This will not only allow everybody to interact and get to know one another better, but it will also add some humor to an otherwise strange work environment.
3. The desert island scenario
This game stands out among the greatest virtual team building activities that exist today. Players are trapped on a desolate island with 7 items to choose from, but they can only take three. Make these things as enigmatic and difficult as necessary so that the members of the team are encouraged to think critically and prepare ahead.
A package of fruit and vegetable seeds, a compact knife, a 100 feet rope, a bedsheet, a pail, a liter of gasoline, a pen and notepad, and other supplies are examples of the things they can choose from. Then divide the team into smaller groups and let them decide what objects to bring to the uninhabited island together. After all of the talks have concluded, join a team video chat to discuss the outcomes.
Group members are forced to perform collaboratively and participate in positive rivalry and enthusiasm as a result of games and routines like these. Such games and exercises can also help virtual workers discover how to cooperate without being in a similar place by demonstrating how functioning together aids a team yield greater performance.
4. Two truths and a lie
Another fantastic game for new groups is a simple yet fun online team activity for remote employees. It has to do with how individuals introduce themselves. Common directives such as "tell us more about yourself" can make someone feel embarrassed. Truth and a Lie aims to take away the uneasiness and make the procedure more enjoyable.
Get everybody together for a video call and have them tell two truths and one lie about themselves. The falsehood should be delivered convincingly so that it is difficult to detect. The truth will be disclosed once everyone has finished guessing. Points are awarded to the person who correctly identified the untruth.
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5. Picture of your life
The basics of this online virtual team building game are straightforward: ask your dispersed coworkers to photograph anything significant from their personal lives. It could be a family image or a holiday picture, a snapshot of regular living, or a set of new footwear they recently purchased. This image should depict one of their hobbies or interests.
Throughout an online meeting, have everyone who participated share the photo. Each person will take a turn, and then you'll talk about their selections. This is a terrific technique to persuade individuals to disclose critical information without causing them to feel uncomfortable.
6. Remote Karaoke
Although we are all aware of the small lags in audio and visual during video conferencing, you could try organizing a karaoke session with your offsite members of the team. Designate each person a song or let them pick their choice. Everybody should attempt to catch a karaoke session in which they sing their finest. Every team player should upload the video to the karaoke host, who will host a digital awards show in which the greatest performances will be played, and awards will be given out. It is one of the best virtual team building activities that create friendly vibes for the team.
7. Virtual coffee chat
This exercise simply needs team members to participate in a monthly video teleconference. Select a schedule that fits everybody and begin conversing if you're the host. Each session has a particular subject, which creates this online coffee talk such an excellent pastime. You could get acquainted and talk about your favorite cuisines, preferred travel destinations, or productivity suggestions.
Doing this activity can be done under any circumstances. We decided to take advantage of the fact that we were all at home and have some fun. Our objective was to share interesting information about our cities or nations.
8. Guess the artist
Guess the artist is one of the most popular virtual team building activities. Encourage each distant employee to produce a picture or find a photo that they can use to share a compelling anecdote or information regarding their lives prior to your next meeting. Everybody should prepare their photographs beforehand by uploading them to a digital whiteboard. Everybody pins labels on each photograph at the start of the session, identifying to whom each photo pertains.
Afterward, you can work collaboratively to discover which photo belongs to whom. When someone makes a right guess, they must discuss their tale with the group. Use a video conference with a platform that permits screen sharing, such as Bitrix24, so the presenter may add footage, and anybody can link the name, face, and experience.
9. Simulated problems
Employ this interactive team building activity to get your distant team to take up and discuss a problem-solving task. The activity with simulated difficulties proceeds precisely as it sounds. You should first design a tough situation involving your group's responsibilities. If you're in charge of a PR team, for instance, you could design a scenario in which the firm has been embroiled in a crisis and needs to recover its reputation. Request that they plan a press statement and a sequence of briefings in stages. Let them respond to queries such as:
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How does the company maintain its credibility?
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Do you make a formal apology?
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How will your PR objectives or marketing strategy alter as a result of this?
These fun games teach participants how to make better decisions and how to think beyond the box. In this manner, employees can be prepared for unexpected circumstances while still working together to improve team effectiveness. No one can say if such an instance may happen in the future. Their answers to this might even help you prepare for it.
10. Share your bucket list!
A bucket list is a collection of activities you wish to experience or visit during your lifespan. Every individual's bucket list, of course, says a great deal about them. What smarter way to get to know your coworkers than to have them share their bucket lists, right?
Make one individual responsible for presenting their bucket list thoughts per week. You can control the length of these lists as well as whether or not items that have already been accomplished should be listed.
The audience can then invest a few minutes debating the bucket list, analyzing commonalities, or merely posing entertaining questions. You can acquire knowledge about other traits of character and see how compatible you are by exchanging bucket lists with them. This game is one of the most suitable virtual team building activities to make the team closer.
11. Never have I ever: Rated E Edition
Almost everyone has undoubtedly played Never Have I Ever in school and is well aware that it is not a work-related game. No need to worry about guidance because this edition of the game does not involve alcohol or graphic storylines that may offend someone. Before you start, make a list of broad topics, such as "Never have I ever tripped because of a banana peel" or "Never have I ever eaten an entire bar of chocolates."
Everybody begins with 5 points and removes one for each action completed. These points can be symbolized by fingers in an online team! Begin with an open palm, folding a finger for every point lost. The person who has the highest number of remaining points or the last person standing is considered the winner. This way, you can discover several interesting unexpected facts about your colleagues while also competing.
12. Virtual book club
You can organize a virtual book club to motivate your offsite employees to read. Establish a few ground guidelines to ensure the club operates seamlessly like:
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The specified reading must be completed by each participant. If they don't, they'll be banned for the next 2 reading sessions, or the conference will be canceled. While the latter may appear severe, it serves as an excellent accountability tool.
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Begin with simpler materials. Not everybody reads quickly; you must ensure that every individual can catch the pace. You may shift to a few longer or more difficult books as the club continues!
A book club not only allows remote teams to interact and converse but also helps them to think critically and be receptive to different viewpoints. All of these attributes are excellent for developing strong communication and attentiveness skills among telecommuters.
Final Thoughts on Best Online Team Building Activities for Remote Teams
The greatest virtual team building activities teach professional skills without coming across as cheesy. As a result of the process, a remote employee should learn more about his or her firm, role, and teammates.
Do not forget that the main goal of doing remote team building activities is for your staff to relax, have fun, and get acquainted with each other. In no time, employee engagement within your company will soar, and teams will run smoothly!
