17+ Virtual Team Building Activities And How to Organize Them

No matter if your team became remote because of the pandemic, or if you've always been a virtual office, conference calls on Microsoft Teams or Zoom just aren't enough to have a good employee engagement. Your workday needs some fun games and team building exercises to improve everyone's well-being and sense of belonging with the rest of the team.

Here are some team building ideas you can do on your next video chat team check in.

Challenges of having remote employees for team bonding

With remote work, you don't see each other every day, you might not even be in the same time zone, so natural interactions between team members simply won't happen unless you plan them. And forcing some personal banter on a zoom video conference can be pretty awkward. That's why you need more than slack messages and emojis. 

"You want to find ways to recreate the lunch meetings, the water cooler encounters, the coffee breaks, the spontaneous bumping into the hallways. You want to create time and spaces that allow for the same relationships forming."
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- Joseph Gerstel, Founder and CEO of GetSomeClass

In other words, you need to create a remote work environment that allows for the same kind of relationships forming as they do face to face. How can you do such a thing? Well here are some tips and team building activities you can do to really amp up your team's engagement and create this time and space for team bonding.

Add social elements to your current meet-up

Integrating social elements to your remote workers day requires a certain intentionality. You can plan regular video call meetings, make the space feel social by chatting or discussing with your team members before a meeting, or implementing ice breaker questions or a collaborative Spotify playlist during your town hall meetings for example. 

Another way you can help your virtual team bond is to create rituals for your weekly meetings; planning dedicated time during your virtual meetings where everyone shares artists, bands, or songs, favorite foods, recipes, cocktails, etc. You could also plan virtual coffee breaks, or create a slack channel or a group chat dedicated to non-work banter. 

Another fun way to improve your remote company culture is sending some food and drinks to your team members, to accompany these video conferencing activities that all members of your team can enjoy in real-time. Why not send donuts to your remote employees on your next virtual coffee break, or have a virtual pizza party? 

5 minutes team building games

Don't have much time to prep or include team building in your day-today activities? You can take the first 5 minutes of your weekly meeting to play a quick team building online game. You could do a fun word game, puzzle, answer trivia questions, have a spelling bee, or cooperate on solving a Wordle. 

Find what fits your team. If you're working with people who love star wars, why not make a "best star wars gif" contest, or a star wars trivia friendly competition. Tools like ahahslide even offer templates already filled with trivia questions.

What is a good virtual team building activity?

A good virtual team building activity enables remote team members to collaborate, brainstorm, or do some problem-solving games while getting to know each other on a more personal level.

Examples of good virtual team building activities:

• Virtual scavenger hunt
• Virtual murder mystery
• Virtual escape room
• Trivia games

What team building activities can you do virtually?

There are a lot of virtual activities you can plan yourself very easily. All you need is a video conference tool like Remo that enables screen sharing, networking and includes a whiteboard. Here are some activities you can do easily on Remo:

• Virtual happy hour
• Icebreaker games
• Virtual book club
• Virtual Pictionary
• Virtual Karaoke
• Virtual Bingo night

Or you can use a facilitator like GetSomeClass to organize more engaging and complete remote team building activities like these:

• Cooking party event
• Master chess event
• Dj salsa combo
• Freestyle rap event
• Wine dine and rhyme

4 team building events ideas to kick it up a notch!

You can have fun virtual team building games regularly, or even better, you can take an ongoing class together with an expert. Here are some awesome team building activities for remote teams that you can do on Remo with GetSomeClass' help:

1. Team building classes

Learning together, all while having fun every week or month is a great way to improve teamwork, employee engagement and make your virtual office a fun workspace for your online team. Learn from the best with regular classes like a chess class, or a virtual salsa dancing class for example. 

2. Telestrations

Just like the classic teletration game, the idea is to write a prompt, pass it to someone else who'll draw it, then someone else will write what they think your drawing is. You can play this game easily on Remo by using our whiteboards to draw what you think the prompt is, pass it to someone else who’ll write what they think it is, and so on. Then everyone can reveal their initial table's prompts and have a good laugh.

3. Balderdash

Generate a random (but real) peculiar word, (like Ferdwit or Dawlap) one table gets the right definition, other tables come up with a fictitious definition. You jump on presentation mode and each table tells their definition, everyone can then vote in the Q&A for which definition is the real one. The funny definitions people come up with and how they try to sell their lie to everyone else is truly amazing.

4. One word clue game

You have a prompt and have to get the other table to guess it with a clue, 1 minute to guess, then another clue, the faster they get it the more points they get. Easy breezy! 

Organize your virtual team building activities!

Now that you have all these amazing virtual team building activities noted, all that’s left to do is get started! Plan your activities, choose the right virtual meeting tool, and have fun! 

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Of course, the best possible tool for your team building must have these capabilities:

• Tables to discuss in smaller groups
• Possibility to go from one table to another
• Possibility to shuffle the attendees randomly
• Timer and announcements
• Whiteboard
• Video call
• Chat (private, by table and general)
• Screen sharing
• Possibility to bring people on stage

Lucky for you Remo has all these features! You can try it for free right now, or choose a plan to be able to plan fun activities all throughout the year.

And if you’d like to work with facilitators who can help organize the activities for you, simply reach out to our partners at GetSomeClass read our list of virtual team building activities facilitators.

Even better yet, build your own Remo package with these amazing team building facilitators!

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