5 Virtual Townhalls for Team Bonding and Building

What are virtual town halls?

Town hall meetings or all-hands meetings is a meeting to see all the colleagues in your office. Your colleagues from different departments use the meeting as an opportunity to discuss any updates. It is one of the most effective ways for sharing company updates and bringing your team together. A virtual town hall is the same thing except it is happening on a virtual event platform. Now that many companies have moved to work from home, virtual town halls have become popular. However, some companies still haven’t mastered how to bring everyone together remotely. Now that we’ve been working from home for over a year, we need to learn how to move these meetings online. There are some challenges with remote town halls. Your company might be quite large and it can be difficult to bring everyone together in an engaging way. How do you get your team to interact with each other over a video call? It might sound intimidating if you’re new to virtual town halls but fear not. We’re here with our top 5 town hall events for team building.

Use icebreakers

The start of any large event can be awkward. Town halls can be intimidating for your colleagues, they might not have met them in person before. When you move to virtual town halls icebreakers are even more important to encourage people to engage with each other. Make sure you explain the icebreaker clearly before you start the game. Be light-hearted and have fun with it so that everyone has a laugh. Here are some virtual ice breaker ideas:

• Two truths and a lie: say two things that are true and one lie. Your colleagues then try to guess what is true and what is not.
• Never have I ever: Say something you have never done and whoever has done it must raise their hand.
• Fun fact: everyone says a fun fact about them.

It is a good idea to give prizes at the virtual all hands for people who play the games. That way your team will be sure to participate. The more people that engage in the games the more your team will get to know each other.

The Oscars- office style

Positive reinforcement is always a good idea to encourage your team to work hard. If you praise hard work your colleagues will feel valued and appreciated. Your town hall meeting provides the perfect opportunity to pick out the colleagues who have performed well in the last month. You can host virtual Oscars at your town hall. Give a virtual Oscar to each department for a stand-out performance that month. You can have many different categories like in the real Oscars. Here are some category ideas:

• Most improved
• Best team player
• Stand out work performance
• Most creative

You could make this a fun event for the rest of the team too. Ask everyone to get dressed up and post out some Prosecco to raise a glass to the winner. Everyone can pose for a picture and you can post the Oscar winner on social media. Special events like this at your virtual town hall will keep your colleagues motivated. You will build your team by keeping them connected with each other.

Food and drinks

We’ve all heard the saying a way to a man’s heart is through his stomach and I think this applies to everyone! If you send out some nice food or drink for the virtual town hall your team will be super excited. You could make your town hall themed and coordinate your food around this. If your budget doesn’t allow for food you could try to get sponsors for your all hands. Here are some themed food ideas:

• Themed around a country: ask everyone to dress up in a country’s colors and send food from this country.
• Valentine’s day: send out pink and red heart-shaped goodies.
• Sustainability: ask a local producer to provide food for the event. Your virtual all-hands can then support the local economy.
• Make it yourself: send out ingredients to your colleagues and ask them to make it themselves. They can send pictures and you can vote for the chef of the group.

By sending out something nice to eat or drink your event will be much more exciting. The more anticipated around your virtual town hall the more engagement you will have.

Present your news in a quiz format

Our attention spans on virtual event platforms are much more reduced than in person. It is difficult to listen to long talks online. Even with a PowerPoint, our brains can only listen to so much information. There is a lot of industry news that your need to update your colleagues on:

• The size of the company: your colleagues might have no idea that new people have started in the company as they are working virtually. It is a good idea to introduce new workers and update them on the size of the workforce.
• New products: update your team on new products or partnerships.
• Covid-19: some colleagues may not know what the situation of the company around Covid-19 is. It is a good idea to update them regularly.
• Achievements: you should highlight what each department has achieved since the last virtual town hall.

It is a good idea to present your company news in a quiz at your virtual town hall. You could do multiple choice questions and have your colleagues guess which answer is correct. You could put your team in breakout rooms to work through the quiz in smaller groups. Try to put people from different departments together, that way your team can get to know each other while they do the quiz. Again, prizes are a good way to encourage people to participate in the quiz. You could give out some annual leave or your company products to the winners.

Feedback

There’s no way to know how you’re team is doing if you don’t ask them. Your virtual town hall is the perfect opportunity to collect some feedback. You could do a virtual survey or a focus group to hear how they are doing. Working remotely may be new for many of your colleagues so feedback is more important now than ever. If you take the time to ask your colleagues how they are doing they will really appreciate it. It will make them feel valued and build a team with positive morale. It will also help you to organize your workers in the most effective way possible.

What next?

Now that you’ve read our top 5 virtual town hall ideas you’re ready to host your first one. Make sure to put these ideas in place to help build your team at your town hall. When your host your town hall the first thing you’ll need is a virtual events platform. Remo has all the features you’ll need to use these interactive virtual town hall ideas. We have the breakout rooms you’ll need to split your team into smaller groups. We also have a polling feature which would be great for a quiz! But take a look yourself, we have a free Free Plan. You can also book in for a Group Demo! to take a look at our product.