Set clear expectations of how you’ll communicate with everyone, whether they’re remote or not. If you’re not sure what that looks like, ask your employees what they prefer. Everyone is different, so set aside time to come up with a communication plan as a team so no one feels left out of the conversation. It is not impossible to have a good culture with remote employees but it much harder than physical office. It is obvious for team members to be more involved with each other when they meet on daily basis and this builds a culture. With collaboration tools like ProofHub remote workers can keep everyone connected but it definitely takes a lot of commitment. One popular virtual team building activity of this type is Online Office Games.

” And especially in the world we live in now—where a majority of those teams are actually working remotely—it’s worth asking what makes for a great team culture in and around remote teams? What are the elements that help a virtual and remote team thrive, that other underperforming teams lack. Conduct a challenge for your remote teams and push everyone to join it. For example, you could do a 3 kilometer challenge and run 3 kilometers every weekday for that month. At the end of the month, tell them all to calculate the total number of kms they ran and how many days they took to complete the challenge. This will the team members to talk about something always and feel closer on a common goal.

Set up a coffee with teammates, and video conference sitting with their dog and sharing answers to a few questions. I think a good team building activity for a remote team would be showing baby pictures and having everyone guess who is who. After that we could play a game of trivia with any genre that the team chooses and do it in teams or we can play online games- have everyone download something like Jackbox Games. Why not host a meeting that is creative, educational and allows your employees to actually see each other? A Virtual Happy Hour allows your team members to bring a beverage of choice , see the faces of their colleagues and talk in real time to feel more connected.

Virtual Escape Rooms

These parties generally occur during work hours, and include video team building games and activities. This gives them a good foundation to start a conversation with team members. A common fear of new remote managers is that employees will lack engagement, following the stereotype of remote workers who get distracted by errands, laundry, and life. If you hire driven individuals and unite them behind a common goal and values, team members who work remotely often find themselves working more, either unable or unwilling to step away. One-on-one communication is less intuitive in a remote context, and more prone to neglect. Remote teams don’t have the luxury of building rapport via chance interactions around the water cooler.

For more about great onboarding, I encourage you to read our previous article, 10 ways to improve your employee induction process. These meetings are a great method to get to know everyone on a personal level, as well as gain a deeper understanding of who is responsible for what, amongst your team. We have a new person in our Marketing team who started this week. Previously, Sally worked at XYZ Inc for five years, in a customer outreach role.

Hiring A Remote Team: What You Should Know

We also respect individual choices to drink alcohol or not, so Afterhours seemed to be the most inclusive choice. In order to enhance our organizational culture and keep the team upbeat and engaged, we brainstormed a list of inclusive activities and conversation prompts. These have helped spice up our work-from-home life, keep our company culture alive, and connect the team like never before. It is incumbent on remote managers to encourage a balanced approach to Software construction work within their teams. We have built a “work hard, play hard” culture where team members encourage and inspire each other to take advantage of our geographic flexibility to travel or pursue fun side activities. While we don’t encourage the use of emojis or gifs as primary forms of communication , we do encourage their use as an emotional form of communication . Over time, an established team might develop custom emojis to express memes or shared inside jokes.

The next culture-building activity may appear out of the box, but it works because it makes a point of tethering people at a personal level. In other words, it is the very antithesis of remote work – isolation and disconnect. It is no surprise that employees today are looking for flexible working hours. And the best part about remote working is that is offer flexible working hours to work from anywhere.

These questions allow team members to shed light on their goals, successes, struggles and needs. They also facilitate the real team building process and let individuals be open and honest with each other.

Best Virtual Team Building Activities For Remote Teams In 2021

The circumstances surrounding this transition to remote work are different from a voluntary shift, and many people might be craving some human to human interaction. Having this occur at the office is a great way to serve employees and boost company culture at the same time.

Each week, you can schedule from a variety of virtual team challenges, online games, and virtual happy hour activities. Example events include pub trivia, tea tastings, superhero challenges, online murder mysteries, escape-style games and more. War of the Wizards is one of the most unique and engaging virtual team building activities in the world.

To earn that trust you want to make sure you have something to show for your work each week. The service makes it really easy to give perks to your employees. We’ve given everyone premium Spotify, iTunes, or Google Play credits, which is great since many remote employees love to listen to music during the day. Having music handy also makes it fun to share what everyone is listening to and hear what sort of eclectic tastes everyone has.

Make Virtual Team Building Part Of Every Meeting

With the Virtual Pantomime, you draw from a list of activities to pantomime out to the group. You will try to pantomime out the best work instructions you can give .

One of the best ways to make a team call fun is to include breakout sessions. If the main call has 30 people on it then you can schedule breakout rooms with four or five people. The advantage of these smaller Building Team Culture in a Remote Team conversations is more people will have the opportunity to speak and share their ideas. In an office setting, even the introverts may participate because of the sheer pressure of physical presence.

• A better way of communication that brings employees to work and collaborate better together towards common goals.
• If I were doing a fun remote activity, I would do a game of ring around the laptop.
• Trivia games always have tons of engagement and they add alittle bit of friendly competition to the mix.
• In any environment, an organization’s culture shifts as its people make judgment calls about acceptable behaviors, and then adapt their behavior to establish new norms.
• An easy way to make virtual meetings fun is to include icebreaker questions or games.
• As a former leadership trainer and coach, I have run several types of team building activities for teams of several sizes – with participants ranging from entry level employees to C-level executives.

According to a 2016 survey of American remote workers, about 91 percent of people who work from home feel that they’re more productive than when they’re in an office. Some certain reasons being less distractions, your own favorite work environment and they are measured based upon their performance. Odyssey Teams also offers virtual team building programs with a CSR component. Strategically build virtual team meeting activities offer a platform for communication while reinforcing a shared team identity. Click here to check more highly engaging virtual trivia team building activities for your team. As a former leadership trainer and coach, I have run several types of team building activities for teams of several sizes – with participants ranging from entry level employees to C-level executives.

How To Build Trust In The Remote workplace

Learning about your teammates’ subject knowledge or passions provides new perspectives, free professional development, and helps you gain more insight into who they are. Plus, you may learn you have similar interests and create an even stronger bond with your teammates. So far, we have hosted a dress like a tv/movie character competition, trivia night, Starch Madness cooking competition, and arts & crafts night. Each winner or participant in the event receives a bonus as a thank you for helping keep the team’s culture alive. If you don’t have a budget for a prize, check out these ideas for free or low-cost custom rewards. Bonusly teams are based across the United States, which means four different time zones and many different interests across the board to keep in mind when planning activities. Team retreats can be costly and there’s a lot of logistics and organization involved, but it’s totally, totally worth it, and will massively benefit your team culture.

This could get people on their feet and get blood flowing. It also helps people get out of their comfort zones and I love that. One of the best remote team building exercising I find that is easy and fun to do is pictionary! It keeps people engaged and it’s always fun and funny to do.

This won’t just help new employees; everyone will benefit from knowing how to log vacation time, what your benefits are, or how to use a specific tool. If you do have a meeting, make sure you’ve tested out your technology so that it can work for everyone. Have team members practice muting and unmuting, for example, and make the effort to use video so that everyone can see each other, even if they’re not in the same place. You’ll be able to maintain that sense of connection without needing to gather in a windowless conference room. With remote work, there’s no such thing as keeping employees on a “need-to-know” basis. The whole team should be aware of your goals, progress, and strategy so you can maintain a sense of working together as a team. Whoever wants to participate can join in on it, but don’t force anyone to.

It’s a great way to make new friends and strengthen bonds. Wow, there are some great ideas and since almost everyone is now working at home and some of us have teens or preteens who are probably still playing Roblox or Minecraft. I think it would be helpful when working remotely to build morale by including elements like group photos so there is more of a connection with your peers. I’ve been running some engagement activities for my team over the last 10 days or so as we start our quest in to working fully remotely.

Here is an epic list of icebreaker questions to help you get started. For example, a few of our team members recently hosted a booth at an industry trade show, and our founder, Nick Gray, recorded a three-minute video recap of the experience for the entire team. You want to remind your team “Oh yeah, this is why I do this” as much as possible. Without these reminders, morale can drop and team members can become disillusioned.

That’s why transparency should be a part of every single company’s list of core standards. The first step is to envision how your ideal remote team culture looks like. You can then turn to your team to showcase your mission publicly, turning your company into a top-of-mind example of great work culture. To learn more about culture-building activities for remote teams, development operations read 10 Great Culture Building Activities for Remote Teams. A number of companies have started to publish their company values or thoughts on their company culture, in the public space. So what are some of the steps you can take to grow a positive company culture with a remote team? Building trust in a remote team is an uphill task, but it is not impossible.

Author: Jeff Fall