Team building is especially important for remote teams, even though the process can be challenging. Some workers may be new to remote work and feel lonely not having coworkers nearby. The team also needs to fuse so they can work as units. Team building activities for remote teams can help.
The pandemic caused many workplaces to jump into the remote work environment. Their usual communication with workers became video chat through platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google, and Slack rather than face-to-face communication.
As employers recognized that virtual employees might struggle to feel connected to the workplace as well as coworkers, they turned to virtual team-building activities for remote teams to do the job.
While virtual communications come with difficulties such as connection issues, staff potentially working across multiple time zones, and people who don’t feel the need to engage in virtual games or icebreaker activities, there are strong benefits to building team collaboration by hosting team-building events online.
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What Are Virtual Team-building Activities?
Virtual team building is a way to bring remote teams together through the use of online games, icebreakers, and other activities. The person is to create bonds between teammates, as would generally develop through in-person contact. Since communication is not in person, trust and transparency are crucial.
How Do These Activities Help Teams Members And Help Teams?
These activities help the team member in many ways. The team-building games encourage team collaboration, boost morale, and add some fun to team video conferencing. Remember that games and activities do not have to be super long to be effective.
You can work short blips of fun into a virtual meeting to ease people into the concept or provide brain breaks throughout a long work day or week.
Why Are Team Building Activities Important For Mobile Teams?
Teams in the workplace – in-person or virtual – need to interact in various ways.
- Brainstorming Sessions: Often, an online team must brainstorm through an issue via problem-solving sessions. Gamez or activities can transfer to the improvement of essential workplace skills.
- Check-ins: In a brick-and-mortar business, employers see employees in person and can get a pulse on how things are going. This can be trickier when your workforce is virtual (or hybrid), so a virtual event can be a chance to check in with employees.
- Conflict Resolution: As partners or small groups may face challenges when members have differing opinions on how to solve problems. Team building exercises offer an excellent opportunity for remote team members to engage in low-stakes conflict resolution practice.
- Connection: Remote employees often feel a bit disconnected from the other employees. Virtual team-building activities can help your remote workers feel more like team members. Otherwise, that connection may not exist like you want it to.
- Communication: Strong written and verbal communication skills are essential in the workplace. While games and such will hopefully improve work-related communication, the process can start with fun conversations!
- Engagement: Virtual team-building activities can foster employee engagement.
- Improve Company Culture: What business does not want the culture of their team to be positive? Doing things together can strengthen the positive feelings employees have for their workplace. Good feelings about the company only happen with work.
- Recreation: Sometimes, a game is just a game. Sure, it might be a fun way to spend some together and may end in some team bonding, but it might just be fun for the staff (and that’s okay!).
- Reveal Talents: In addition to friendly competition, a fun activity can reveal hidden talents among team members that others do not know exist.
How Do Remote Teams Build Trust?
Teamwork should naturally occur if employees are forced to work together playing games via video conference. As team mentality develops, trust naturally evolves. How else can a team make decisions and arrive at solutions?
Employers hope someone will step forward as a facilitator to lead the group forward. Trust develops when natural leadership, teamwork, group problem-solving, and other activities lead to success.
How Can You Build Team Spirit With Remote Teams?
One reason for team building virtual activities is to promote spirit throughout the workspace. Competition can cause division, but it can also pull people together and make people feel good about their job and team.
When planning activities, be certain to keep things lighthearted and fun. Offering small prizes for winners can go a long way toward encouraging authentic participation.
What Team Activity Can Be Done Virtually?
There are many team-building activities for remote teams. You can host and facilitate just about any in-person activity in a virtual environment. Does it look different? Of course. But it is still quite possible.
Fortunately, there has become quite a market for virtual activities to encourage some fun and competition in the workspace. Now that you know why they are important, are you wondering what games to play and how you implement them?
What Are Some Team Building Activities For Remote Teams?
There are many different types of fun team-building activities that can get your team together and either play virtual games or just socialize.
Book Club: Invite your virtual office members to all read the same book and then discuss it. Or, everyone can just report back on whatever they are reading. To avoid ruining the plot, just give the title and author, show the cover, and rank it on a 10-point scale.
Icebreaker Games: Take information about the employees and make a game out of it. It can be Guess Who, Bingo, or some other twist to help workers get to know one another.
Icebreaker Questions: Icebreakers are sometimes questions people answer when they get together to help “break the ice.” Formulate a list that will make things exciting but not seem intrusive to people
Trivia Games: Creating an online trivia game should be a quick and easy way to promote fun in the work environment. Create partnerships for a team-building event.
Online Games: A simple search will find you virtual games ranging from Pictionary to virtual escape rooms to solving murder mysteries.
Virtual Happy Hour: With an in-person opportunity to chat by the water cooler or during a coffee break, the team can get to know one another organically. Hosting a virtual happy hour (or coffee break) can create that chance.
Virtual Scavenger Hunt: Send the team a list, and the first person to return to the meeting with all the items wins.
