Many virtual team building exercises are meant to encourage your team to collaborate on finding a shared solution to a problem. A successful activity will provide workers with the opportunity to get to know one another while also allowing them to leverage their abilities to engage in a game or event.
Excellent virtual team-building activities in the UK allow your team members to get to know their colleagues, which helps to strengthen your team’s relationships. Even in small and medium enterprises, some employees collaborate more often than they do with their coworkers. Marketers may be comfortable with salespeople, but they may not be as familiar with the accounting staff.
Here are 13 virtual team-building ideas that you may utilise to help your team become more cohesive.
-
Incorporate ‘show and learn’ sessions into your schedule.
Every person on your team likely possesses a unique ability or talent that the other members of the team might benefit from knowing more about.
Set aside time for workers to take turns teaching their colleagues something new in a relaxed and unstructured environment. Not only does this facilitate the sharing of talents and information within the team, but also encourages the team to take an active interest in one another’s abilities and to value their expertise!
-
Host remote workshops and classes
Although team members sometimes have the same interests, when working remotely, it might be difficult to determine who else is learning Italian, learning to code, or is interested in personal growth.
Investigate what seminars and courses outside of the professional world may be of interest to your staff, and see if you can conduct enjoyable virtual sessions to accommodate their schedules. It is critical, however, that the themes and skills are chosen by the students be their own and do not feel imposed upon them. It’s all about having a good time and making that connection.
Forming alliances with websites that provide online courses might also be a wonderful addition to your team-building activities, particularly if your team can monitor its development and compare it to that of others.
This is very beneficial in allowing remote team members to get familiar with the specialties of others, which in turn allows for greater cooperation and stronger project outcomes in the future.
-
Arrange virtual workout sessions
Isn’t it time to start putting the “exercise” back into “team-building exercises”? When individuals work remotely, they generally take fewer steps or participate in fewer exercises than they’d have if they went to an office location.
Individually, team members must move about sufficiently. Virtual exercises, on the other hand, may be a fantastic team-building activity when done in a group setting. It may be free, in which case users just choose their favorite teacher on YouTube and take an hour’s break to work out with their friends. If you need a little additional motivation, this method of working out can help you stay accountable to your friends.
-
Workshops and webinars
Be honest: although no one loves to confess that they have flaws in their professional lives, there are always new abilities and technology that we may learn and use in our work. To help your staff become more engaged, try enrolling in some professional development activities such as webinars or seminars that may be valuable to everyone on your team. Following completion, arrange a team debriefing video conference to share the most important points as well as how your team can put what you’ve learned into action.
-
Purposeful podcasts
A growing number of people are listening to podcasts and creating their own. Podcasting is becoming more popular. Is there a list of favorite podcasts that your team can listen to and then discuss as a group that you can share with others? Consider taking it a step further by contemplating how your team may design and broadcast their podcast that will assist educate your audience while also allowing you to establish yourself as industry thought-leaders in your field.
-
Create a Once-a-Week “Live” Virtual Office
One of the most difficult aspects of remote work is overcoming the sensation of “presence” that comes with working in a physical workplace. It’s one thing to hop on a conference call, and quite another to happen to run into someone at the water fountain on a casual basis.
This activity – or, more accurately, this manner of functioning – is intended to address the issue of a lack of presence. Essentially, it entails generating a continuous live broadcast of the whole team that runs continuously during the workday.
This stream may be in the form of real-time, always-on video, which can be made using platforms like Google Hangouts or Zoom, among other things. Another option is to build virtual “rooms” where anyone may join in for a conference call or to observe who is doing what, as done with software such as Sococo or Tandem Chat.
Even though it is not technically an activity, this live broadcast may go a long way toward alleviating the lack of cohesiveness that remote teams sometimes experience. Not even doing anything, but merely working while being aware of what others are doing, might help to foster a feeling of community.
Of course, you are not required to do it daily. A once-a-week work session might be sufficient to promote friendship among employees.
-
Run a “Virtual Campfire”
To gather around a campfire in the middle of nowhere, eating smores, and swapping old tales is the ultimate way to foster togetherness. However, as a virtual team, you are unable to do this.
Even though you cannot reproduce the fire or the environment, the tales and the smores may be recreated. A “virtual” campfire would take place outside of business hours, and it would follow the same format as a regular campfire. Although the structure is largely up to interpretation, sending out a box including smores and campfire-scented candles to each member of the team could be considered.
Dim the lights and tell tales, particularly campfire favorites – frightening stories – by asking musically skilled team members to perform music and sing songs. Simple tournaments that can be completed online may be held (such as video games). This kind of virtual campfire is offered by firms that specialise in virtual campfires.
-
Host Daily Standups Over Coffee
The daily standup meeting is a must-have for every team. However, in a virtual environment, asking individuals to report what it is they’re working on by email might be a little monotonous and tedious.
As an alternative, consider holding your everyday standups over everyone’s first cup of tea or coffee in the morning. It establishes a communal ritual from which everyone may take part and benefit. This ceremony may also serve as a metaphorical “beginning of work” signal for certain people.
Seeing a member of the team in a less formal location, such as a neighborhood coffee shop, helps to establish a sense of familiarity in the working environment. Hosting a standup meeting becomes more interesting when there is some visual attraction involved.
Remember, this does not have to be a planned exercise; instead, just include it into your daily routine. You’re going to have to do standups anyhow, so why not make them a little more enjoyable?
-
Play Virtual Pictionary
Pictionary is a popular game that everyone is familiar with. The game, for those who aren’t acquainted with it, involves breaking up a gathering into two or more teams. Each team has a member who draws a card and then sketches it on a sheet of paper. The opposing team member must correctly identify the thing shown in the artwork before the time limit expires.
It is necessary to make a few adjustments to adapt this game to a virtual medium. One individual (typically the team leader) will be tasked with the role of ‘dealer,’ who will choose cards and distribute them to each member of the team. Then the member of the team may then dry the card perhaps electronically or on a piece of paper or the whiteboard with the camera directed at the card.
If you have the necessary technology, you may even go the whole digital way with virtual reality games such as DoodleVR.
-
Virtual Office Tours and Quiz
As a group, ask the participants to provide virtual tours of their workspaces. Allow them the liberty to be as corny or humorous as they want. Ask them to speak about something especially significant to them, such as a book they like reading or a device they can’t function well without.
It is possible to discover a great deal about someone by looking at their work surroundings. People who work in real workplaces want to personalise their workspaces. In virtual settings, you may obtain the same kind of insight by taking a tour of the workplace space.
After the tour, request that everyone submit photographs of their respective offices to the team’s leader. After a week, send a photo of your workplace to the rest of the group. Inquire with the crew about who owns the office and who they work for. Also, inquire as to whether or not they see anything noteworthy in the photograph.
-
Send ‘daily snapshots’
An extremely basic method of strengthening teams is via the use of the concept of a “daily snapshot.” Encourage your coworkers to share a photo of anything every day, whether it’s what they’re doing for lunch or a new sweater they’re wearing and adoring.
Teams may then remark on the photos and start a discussion about what they’ve seen. An easy approach to having a non-work-related conversation every day, and it helps to strengthen team relationships by providing a frequent glimpse into team members’ personal life. Side note: While not everyone on the team is required to provide a photo every day, at least one must be shared to maintain this a frequent topic of conversation.
Because it has become a part of your routine, you may even find yourself looking forward to what you will publish.
-
Host joint meditation sessions
Remember that virtual team-building exercises are vital for relieving stress and injecting a little fun into the workday. When individuals work from home and are in command of their schedule, their mental health is very vital to their productivity. Many individuals are just unwilling to stop and take a break. The ramifications of this over an extended period may be devastating. Furthermore, stressed team members aren’t the most enjoyable colleagues, which means it might have an impact on other workers as well.
Consider taking a break as a regular part of your workers’ workday. Organising meditation sessions everybody can attend at the same time may help to promote this since you won’t have to worry about what others are doing at the same time.
-
Get together in virtual book clubs
Hosting activities that are not linked to business is a terrific way for coworkers to get to know one another, particularly if they are recurrent events with a clear goal. For a team-building project, why not host a virtual reading club on the internet?
It may be difficult to establish a connection and unmute oneself, especially if team members haven’t ever met before and are placed in a Zoom-room without a defined subject of discussion to discuss.
Participation in a book club provides them with something to speak about and is a terrific method to get discussions started. Every event may be hosted by a different team member, allowing everyone to demonstrate their organising abilities – as well as their excellent taste in books. Ensure that the whole crew enjoys the Friday mood.
After a busy week at work, almost all of your group members will be looking forward to kicking back with a refreshing beverage on Friday afternoon. So why not have both at the same time? Host this final event on a Friday, so that it is still officially considered work (although at the very end), and so that all team members are there to socialise with one another.
Conclusion
Running a small company may be a demanding endeavor, but by enhancing your team’s capabilities, you can reach your business objectives. Due to the increasing number of teams that are working remotely, we believe you will find these virtual team-building exercises to be beneficial in promoting communication, acquiring problem-solving abilities, and creating strong relationships among your team members.
Author Bio: Ruby Clarke is a former chef now working as an SEO Content Writer together with SEO Consultant and Associates in an SEO Agency. She with a keen eye for business and financial startup information. She spends her spare time reading, watching crime series, and cooking at home.