With more and more people working from home, it’s hard to develop the sense of teamwork that you need. Teams who know and like each other have a better chance of working together and achieving success than other teams do. When all of your employees are in the same office, you can easily come up with some ideas to break the ice and build a sense of community. It’s not always as easy to accomplish the same thing when you have remote workers scattered across the country. There are some simple ideas that you can do online to help remote workers come together.
Desert Island
The desert island game is one you probably played dozens of times with your friends. Someone comes up with a question and everyone else takes turns sharing their answers. You get to know each other and see what others would do on a desert island. Ask questions such as what three books they would take with them or what five movies they would watch on the island if they could.
Virtual Happy Hour
Virtual happy hour takes place after work hours but still instills a sense of community in your employees. Take an hour out of the day and ask remote workers to sign in and enjoy a relaxed atmosphere. While you might go out for drinks with people you see every day, you can’t do the same thing with remote workers. If you worry that some workers don’t drink, you can encourage them to have nonalcoholic drinks or replace happy hour with coffee breaks.
Guessing Game
For this activity, come up with a series of questions that you send to your remote workers. Ask them to return their answers by the end of the week. You then show the question and one of the responses. Workers take turns trying to guess who responded that way. This is a fun way to let workers get to know each other and see what they have in common. Questions might include what they say is their favorite animal and what they would do if their car broke down on the side of the road.
Recipe Swap
One of the downsides of working from home is that you don’t get to talk to people in real life. You might spend hours working on your computer and have no contact with people outside of your house for days. With recipe swap, you have a fun way to connect and share with others. All you need is a favorite recipe that you want to share. You can even use a program to compile the recipes that your workers share in an employee cookbook.
Remote Bingo
To play remote bingo, you just need to come up with simple cards that include some of the things that you see and do every day. You might include tasks such as logging in before a shift and sending an email to another worker along with things that everyone experiences like getting a phone call from a friend and checking the mail. Workers can share the spaces they crossed off until someone forms a bingo.
Show and Tell
Show and tell is another fun exercise that might make you feel like you’re back in school. Take an hour out of your busy day and ask remote workers to use their webcams to show something they love and want to talk about. You might see photos of their kids or pets along with souvenirs from their past trips.
Virtual Trivia
Recreate the feeling of relaxing in the pub with a virtual trivia game. This virtual team building exercise lets you compete as a team and see what you know about different categories. Picture rounds ask you to guess what the image is before you see the whole thing, while music rounds test your knowledge of songs and singers. You’ll also find 60-minute rounds that come in handy if you’re short on time. With virtual trivia, your team just needs Zoom to compete.
Remote work can make you feel a little lonely and even leave you feeling like you miss out on working around other people. Your remote workers feel the same way, which is why you should look for some virtual exercises that foster teamwork and bring those workers together. Consider fun activities and games such as show and tell and remote bingo.
