Bonding with your team is productive
Download the CIAP Virtual Team Building Activities Checklist Here.
Are you looking to increase productivity, confidence, and connection amongst all employees and management?
As a remote worker, you may enjoy the freedom and flexibility it offers, but you don’t tend to get the same emotional bond as you would through face-to-face interactions and activities in the office.
Employee morale improves significantly when building close work relationships, and when all members of the team take healthy breaks from their busy workdays.
Let’s dive into our virtual activities checklist that will help you create a comfortable team culture and have some fun!
1. Pop Quiz
Randomly create teams amongst your managers and colleagues to play against one another with a quiz. Try to source questions from an array of topics such as history, sports, and pop culture. It can stir up some friendly competition and build teamwork virtually. You could even throw in some questions about your company or organization to keep things interesting.
Free tools available to create a quiz online are:
These platforms also have more functionalities such as polls, live charts, Q&As and more.
2. Themed Work Days If you are spending every day in your pyjamas as you work, consider setting up a day of the week when you and your team dress formally, wear funny hats, or a favourite shirt.
Start a video call and have everyone explain what they are wearing, where they got it, and maybe a funny story attached to it. This type of idea gives you something to look forward to as you spice up your morning routine and ditch the athleisure wear and pyjamas.
Themed Day Ideas for Virtual Meetings
- Formal Fridays: Pull out your fancy clothes and put Casual Fridays to shame!
- Wacky Wednesdays: Unusual, weird, and wacky outfits are a must.
- Pink Wednesday: Take a page from the cult classic Mean Girls, and throw on your favourite shade of pink.
- Masquerade Mondays: Cover up the Monday Blues and kick off the week with some laughs by getting crafty and making a masquerade mask.
- 80’s Turn-Up Tuesdays: Step back in time and get ready for an 80’s themed Happy Hour and/or mini dance party.
3. Photography Show and Tell
As the old adage goes, “photographs speak louder than words,” and many people surely have great memories captured on camera that they would love to share through Slack or any other collaboration hub.
Reminisce about favourite memories and pre-covid times by giving your team a chance to show their photo(s) and explain it. Then open up the floor for other members of the team to ask questions and comment on the picture. You will be surprised by all the new things you learn about your team members in terms of their lifestyle, interests, and personality. You could even give this activity a theme such as architecture, hobbies, and family.
It doesn’t have to be photography that you share with the team; it could be showing your dog, a new purchase you made, or even a meal you prepared.
4. Whose Desk Is That?
Everyone has their own style and preferences when it comes to how and where they work at home. Have each team member share a photo of their office space and everyone guesses who it belongs to. You could even go as far as sharing photos of desktop backgrounds, coffee mugs, and the view from your window.
Want to take it to the next level? Have your team members create their very own ‘Spot the Difference’ photos of their desks as a challenge to the team!
5. Fitness Challenges
Break up your day with some exercise! Don’t sit at your desk throughout the entire duration of your workday.
Have each member of the team set up a challenge, such as doing a certain amount of sit-ups or pushups by the end of the workday. You could even set up 30-day challenges based on diet and fitness goals that are available here to print out or email to your team. Each goal you accomplish as a team brings you closer together and maintains everyone’s energy and health.
6. Charades
Sometimes a simple game of charades is all you need to bring out some laughter and excitement with your team.
Break up your team into partners and on a video call and have one person on your team, message them a word or phrase to act out. The partner has to guess what they are acting out within a set time limit. The winner gets to choose the game or activity you do the next week.
7. Blind Drawing Contest
If you have any artists on your team, you may feel intimidated to take part in this one, but it is hard to even for the most seasoned sketcher.
All team members have but a pencil and paper to draw. Then, have one team member put several different names of objects, scenes, and animals in a hat and draw them at random. Once everyone knows what to draw, each person needs to either close their eyes or blindfold themselves and draw it. Once they feel they are satisfied with their blind masterpiece, they can look at their drawings and share them with the team. Sometimes, you’ll be surprised at how well you fare. Choose a winner and award them with a small gift or reward.
8. Cook-Off
Considering there’s a lot more time to prepare home-cooked meals, share your creations with your team!
Each team member must create a meal with whatever is in their pantry and take a picture of their dish. After sharing the photo, everyone can explain what dish they made and the hard work that went into it. In the end, each person can choose what meal they would choose if they went to a restaurant. You can change this up by assigning a specific cuisine, dish and even ingredients. It requires all team members to be creative and test their cooking abilities.
9. Personality Guessing GameTest your managers and coworkers on how well they know each other by reading the description of your personality type aloud. Everyone must do the Myers-Briggs Personality test and not share the results with anyone. Copy and paste a brief part of the description that is most accurate in your eyes, and send it to one designated host on your team. The host will then begin to read the description, and everyone chooses whom it belongs to. This game can help people understand each other better and have fun while doing it.
10. Company Vision Mad Lib
Everyone has heard their company vision over and over again, and if they haven’t, this is a great way to get them familiar with it.
Take your company’s vision from your website and pull out all the verbs, nouns, and adjectives. Then starting from the bottom up, ask your team to take turns shouting out words and one person fills in the blanks. When it is complete, tell employees it’s a mad lib for the company’s vision and read out how it turned out.
You could also break out in teams and challenge everyone to choose their own words required for the mad lib and send them in. You can see who has the best-written company vision and have the winner choose the next mad lib.
11. Things You Can’t Live Without
These are the essential things you need to have with you or available to you at all times. Pick 4 things you must have and share them with the team. Explain each item’s relevance and why it means so much to you. After, rank every item from the most important to least important and then state what the fifth item would have been and why.
Takeaway
Get creative and involve everyone in on a brainstorm for more ideas to spice up your workday. Take a well-deserved break and bond with the people you work alongside! These mental breaks will help you feel recharged to take on the rest of the day with ease.
Are you looking for ways to enhance and maintain your team’s workplace culture? Try CIAP’s Team Bonding Checklist!