34 Team Building Activities For The World Of Remote Work

Shark Tank is one of the most popular shows on television. Getting your team to participate in your own version of this show can stimulate entrepreneurship and big thinking. Since all players have to work in teams and divide duties to be successful, it will also promote teamwork and collaboration. I’ll share a huge list of such team-building activities in this article. Use them freely at your next team retreat, weekend team getaway, or after-office activities.

Working with pets can reduce stress, and training promotes patience, understanding and flexibility. If you have a lot of pet parents in the office, any team building activities that include animals are sure to be a hit. Hitting the town for a night of karaoke is one of the best team building activities for creating a spirit of camaraderie because everyone will show up to cheer each other on. It allows people to let their guard down, let their silly side out and let their coworkers see them in a new light. There are lots of local studios offering team building activities with painting and pinot noir. You’ll choose what you want to paint from their catalog, and one of the studio’s instructors will show your team how to recreate the masterpiece themselves.

And it’s a great way to open a brainstorming session, because it encourages people to give their ideas, since they can’t be worse than the ones you started with. Have people show off their hobbies on a Zoom meeting by giving each person up to 10 minutes to show something they made or talk about something they like to do. Come up with a list of items people might have at home. Give kudos to the people who find an item the fastest and the person who found the most items from the list at the end. It might seem redundant, but this game is actually less resource intensive than Pictionary because it’s less dependent on randomized words.

Remote Gift Exchange

If there were any positives to take from 2020’s lockdown, one was certainly the creative ways in which people staved off the boredom. Players go around and try to fill out their card by asking others about whether an attribute on the card applies to that person. It’s safe to say that there’s an awful lot that the average employee doesn’t know about his or her colleagues. There are a lot of informative gems to uncover, and Human Bingo helps you do just that. There’s a wide world outside of the 4 walls of the office . Points go to anyone who correctly guesses any of the items.

Plus, to win, players will have to work together as a team and delegate responsibilities. This game focuses on communication skills – giving and listening to instructions. At the end of each game, evaluate what went wrong, what went right while communicating. This is not only great for getting people involved, but it can also highlight flaws in how your team members communicate verbally. Divide all players into teams of 2 to 4 players – basically, what you would see in a team of startup co-founders.

• A virtual team event could be just what you need to raise morale, increase motivation, boost engagement, and improve collaboration.
• This gives team members a much better understanding of each other’s beliefs and motivations than simple personal trivia.
• It’s also important to actively encourage communication and make sure all team members know their goals both individually and as a group.
• Alternatively, ask them to write their ideas on sticky notes.
• From tiny campfire, to International Monster Hunter, and Bingo, here are some fun virtual activities for virtual meetings and other formats.
• Barcades bring you cocktails while you bring the pain in a video game showdown.

You need every part of the “studio” working together seamlessly to pull off a successful movie. Since you’re working in a limited environment, teams will also have to be creative to get the narrative and effects they want. This can promote lateral, unconventional thinking. Map the connections between team members on a whiteboard. Teams create their “avatars”, then draw lines to show how they know other team members. This can work great as an ice-breaker at events where teams don’t know each other well.

Minute Team Building Activities

This one can be more or less work related, depending on how well your work lends itself to video. But the long and the short of this activity is to have your team capture progress footage of a specific project. For example, the letters “B” and “D” sound very similar. They’re easily confused on the phone or on the radio. But the words for these letters in the NATO phonetic alphabet — Bravo and Delta — are easy to separate. The NATO phonetic alphabet is a standardized collection of words that represent the letters of the alphabet.

The catch is that they can only ask yes-or-no questions. Once they’ve discovered which half of the pair they have, everyone must then find their mate. It’s a fun way to get everyone to engage with company values and policies.

At the end of the game, the person with the maximum points wins the game. Each team is given 1 minute to guess the word. Here’s the catch —the drawing cannot include letters, words, or numbers. The group with the highest number of right guesses takes home the trophy.

But if you want to polish their communication habits, and get them exchanging information more consistently and concisely, you’ll need to take a few additional steps. Even with the prevalence of remote work, in-person team building activities still have a place. Some remote teams are local enough for occasional get-togethers.

It can be tough to build a team where every team member feels like an important part of the whole and is committed to the success of the entire group. And to be fair, some team building activities for work get more eyes rolling than problems solved. It’s a critical piece of developing a great company culture too.

You can also grab additional tarps and get all teams to do this activity at the same time, timing their performance along the way. Divide participants into teams of two people each. Come up with a list of trivia questions related to your place of work. Divide participants into equally sized teams of 3-12 people. This “social network” works best when you’re dealing with people who don’t know each other. Establishing the relationships between them will break the ice.

How Do You Make A Virtual Meeting More Fun?

But consider adding in a few minutes for casual check-ins and small talk. This is extra important for remote employee bonding, as virtual team members don’t have a chance to chat with their neighbors throughout the workday. Leave the stale meeting room behind for a more memorable and relaxing experience aboard Adeline’s Sea Moose—the perfect venue for corporate team building activities. Take a break and enjoy panoramic vistas of the Chicago skyline with a cocktail in hand with your team members. We’ve mostly focused on team building activities that require relatively few materials.

Players must ferret out the lie for each person. It’s a way to get people to open up about themselves, while also developing each person’s deductive skills. When done, you’ll see the original concept gradually distorted across each version—and you’ll learn who excels at written or drawn communication. Telestrations is a pen-and-paper game involving a circle of people, not unlike the game of “Telephone.” Here, person one draws a picture and passes it to their left. Person two describes the picture with a sentence, covering up the picture and passing it. Person three draws a picture based on the description, covering up the sentence and passing it.

Incorporating LEGOs into your team building activities is a great way to get the creative juices flowing. Divide into smaller teams, break out the building blocks and have everyone create a LEGO sculpture that would put the Empire State Building to shame. You can center the challenge around a theme or set specific parameters, like it must be at least three feet high or it must contain at least one moving part. Many of these are also fantastic team building activities for large groups.

Basic Board Games

Teammates will need to guide the blindfolded, barefoot team member safely through the path using hands and directions. You can find thumbtacks shaped like smiley faces and hearts to simulate “like” and “love” reactions. Mini post-it notes work great for “comments,” or you can paint the whole board with blackboard paint and allow teammates to scrawl in chalk. Producing an entertaining lip sync requires creativity, coordination, and delegation, cornerstones of effective teamwork.

Divide players into small teams of 3-4 people each. You can make the team composition the same as your real-life office teams to focus more on the team identity aspects of this activity. A great, easy game for building relationships and getting people to work together. Teammates are tied together by the wrist and must complete a series of simple tasks. To be successful, everyone has to collaborate closely and communicate well. This limitation and the timed nature of the game create a lot of opportunities for fun mishaps.

Players are divided into small teams where they must work together to create an emblem, flag or shield for their teams. Besides collaboration and creative thinking, this activity is also great for building a stronger sense of team identity and cohesiveness. Plus, it’s flexible enough for any situation or group size. When colleagues build strong rapport with each other, they are more likely to effectively problem solve, cooperate and invest a personal interest in doing their job well. Concentration can be adapted to one of the most fun team building activities for work. You could even print custom cards that feature pictures or phrases specific to your company.

Team Building Activities For The World Of Remote Work

The team that gets closest to the correct spelling, judged by an arbitrary eyeing, wins. The winning team can then bet double or nothing by guessing the meaning of the word too. Each player makes a list guessing who the baby might be. Distribute a list of all players to each player. The player with the identity is known as The Post, and all other players can bombard The Post with unlimited questions to uncover the identity. The exercise continues with other participants.

The first person to guess within five cents of the actual retail price without going over gets 1 point for their team. If you guess over the retail price then you are out for that round, but your team members may continue. Ten quiet minutes during an otherwise busy day team building can be an effective way to bring your people together and build strong remote teams. You can achieve these results with a guided meditation session. Show & Tell is one of the best virtual team building ideas that promotes public speaking skills and storytelling.

More Virtual Team Building Ideas

Being good at this game requires the entire team to coordinate and work together. In each round, ask the team to choose a different leader. Ask each team to pick one person to be the “artist”. Ask the artist to take his place next to the flipchart.

Or, if your team is more into Netflix than novels, grab some popcorn and pop on a flick of your choosing. While there’s no talking during the movie, Netflix Party lets you all chat about what’s happening on the screen or catch up while the movie plays in the background. Watch your favorite sessions from our first-ever virtual Culture First conference.

Virtual Socialization Space

Virtual happy hours are video meetings dedicated to fun virtual team games and activities, and may be part of the work day or at the end of it. For example, you might include a round of icebreaker questions and then do virtual team trivia. We recommend dedicating either the entire meeting to virtual team building activities, allocating 30 minutes at the end of your event, https://globalcloudteam.com/ or following The 8% Rule. The 8% Rule states that 8% of the meeting, or about five minutes for every hour, should include fun virtual games and activities. In addition to doing activities on conference calls, there are occasions for hosting virtual team building games/activities or exercises. Example ideas include virtual birthday parties and online fundraisers.

Take Your Team On A Virtual Vacation!

Escape From Pompeii sharpens communication skills and prioritizes collective success over individual outcomes. Plus, it is nice to know that if a volcano erupts, then your coworkers have your back. You and your teammates must get all members aboard the raft within five minutes or less. To make the “raft,” you will tape off a small section of the floor, or place a piece of wood on the ground. Participants can arrange themselves in any combination, as long as all team members are aboard the raft and no part of any member’s body touches an outside surface.

As a team, they will try to paint a specific agreed-upon picture by following the formatting rules. The Team moderator makes a list of common facial expressions and sends it to one person from each group. This chosen member emotes the given expression, while the other members of the group figure out what that is. Well here’s the catch – the usage of hands is prohibited while enacting. In this game, the plot of a movie or tv series will be revealed, word by word, by the team moderator. Teams of five will take turns guessing the names of these movies or series.