There’s no doubt that remote work does add a lot of convenience, cost-effectiveness, and flexibility to the lives of both employees and employers, but there is one major downside: the lack of team bonding.
Factors like time differences, distance, or even a lack of quality Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in someone’s area can hinder the process of creating and maintaining team bonds.
But there’s a way around these challenges using virtual team bonding activities. These activities can create an environment of trust, open communication, and seamless teamwork. In this article, I’ll share some of your best options, broken down into different categories.
Let’s get started!
Games & Challenges
Games and challenges add an element of fun, thrill, and excitement to remote team bonding activities. By encouraging your remote team to solve challenges or compete in games, you’re helping them bridge differences to achieve mutual goals, a skill they can later easily apply to work.
Below are some options to try out:
- Virtual Escape Room: Like the name suggests, these are virtual spaces where teams are locked together and must solve riddles or puzzles and find clues to progress and escape. They’re definitely one of my favorite choices since the whole team pushes themselves to their full critical thinking and problem-solving potential and actively collaborates with other team members.
- Online Trivia: A perfect mix of nostalgia, entertainment, and brain exercise. You can choose from literally any category, such as movies, history, or even people from your team. It’s also a great way for employees to improve their general knowledge and learn about the interests of other teammates.
Social Connection Building
Sometimes your employees may just want someone to chat or vent to, or maybe even grab a cup of coffee with and express themselves. These human interactions can turn feelings of isolation and burnout into productivity, efficiency, and improved well-being for your remote team.
Some options you might want to consider include the ones below.
- Virtual Coffee Chats: You can arrange and schedule casual online chats between employees to mimic the hallway or table conversations that we used to have in the office. It can help employees let off some steam, feel heard, and make long-lasting connections with their peers.
- Culture Swap Sessions: As a remote team, your employees may come from a lot of different cultures and backgrounds. Sometimes they may feel afraid to express themselves openly. With culture swap sessions, you can create a safe space for them to share traditions, snacks, or holidays they celebrate. Talk about a perfect way to balance learning with inclusion.
Creative Skill Development
No matter the type of role anyone has, creativity is an essential skill that can help your employees tackle unexpected or alarming real-world problems. You can encourage them to bring it out using some of the simple activities shared below:
- Online Learning Show and Share: Different employees may excel in different things. You could make them feel valued by encouraging weekly sessions where one employee teaches a specific skill to the others. This could be anything, such as a language, Excel tips and tricks, or even baking. By doing so, you can encourage employees to learn both work-related and other skills, creating an environment of continuous learning.
- Group Storytelling: Here, you can start a story, and everyone can continue adding to a plot that has been going around. This can help employees challenge their imagination, think out of the box, and also understand how their teammates think and act.
Physical and Mental Well-Being
Physical and mental well-being should always be a core priority for any remote team, and the plus side is that they can also make for great team bonding activities. You might want to try out the ones below.
- Virtual Workout Sessions: Talk about turning your remote employees into gym bros. These virtual workout sessions could be anything, from yoga classes to proper cardio sessions. They can help your remote employees relieve stress through exercise and an environment of collective effort.
- Virtual Meditation Sessions: The brain is the most used organ in our bodies, and sometimes it needs a break. Virtual meditation sessions can give the brain this much-needed break in the form of breathing exercises, soothing music, or calm environments.
Virtual Team Building Activities – Keeping Remote Employees Connected, Productive, and Happy
Remote work is gradually evolving into a mainstream practice, with more and more employees and employers shifting towards it.
With this growth, employers must take the necessary steps to minimize the effects that distance and varying time zones can have on team bonding and collaboration. Whether it’s gaming, challenges, social connections, or physical and mental well-being sessions, each of the activities above can allow employers to strengthen team bonding in a way that keeps employees connected, productive, and happy.
