Team-building is about finding ways to help a group of people work better together. The goal of a team-building event is for individual members of the group to see each other as more than just co-workers and support each other accordingly. But team-building goals are more difficult to achieve in the “new normal” of a post-pandemic world as nearly everything has gone online. People are shopping online, learning online, playing online casino games and they’re working online too.
Team leaders of a fully remote or even hybrid workforce face a tremendous challenge — With so many people working remotely these days, how can you create a bond among your team? Remote work makes it very difficult to schedule the kind of face-to-face team-building exercises that used to be the norm — and the stakes are high. Research shows that remote workers tend to have weaker colleague relationships than members of an in-house team. But it’s totally possible to turn the situation around. In fact, if being online is the problem, then being online is the solution, too. Online team-building games and virtual team-building activities enable remote workers to socialize regularly and feel valued. Read on to learn more about the importance of team building in remote working environments and five great online games for virtual team-building.
The Benefits of Virtual Team-Building
Effective teamwork is crucial for any high-performing business. Yes, remote teams are separated by physical distance, but that doesn’t mean that collaboration is any less important. Shared objectives and a culture of unity are just as important for remote teams as in traditional office settings. Virtual team-building games help connect team members in ways that foster productivity, cohesion, and a shared purpose. Here are some of the benefits of online team-building activities.
Strengthening Relationships
Remote team members may be far away from each other physically, but virtual team-building games offer a way to bridge the gap and create genuine connections. They give colleagues an opportunity to know each other beyond their roles, nurturing a sense of camaraderie that transcends geographical boundaries.
Shared Goals Beyond Work
Collaborative pursuits in virtual team-building enable teams to work towards common objectives outside the realm of work tasks. These shared goals reinforce the spirit of unity and purpose in teams and encourage a deeper level of understanding among colleagues.
Enhancing Communication
Effective communication is one of the most important requirements for remote teams, and virtual team-building activities can be a valuable training ground. Taking part in fun challenges can encourage team members to communicate more clearly, listen more attentively, and adapt their communication styles to ensure everyone understands what they are trying to say.
<h3>Fostering Creativity
Working environments that encourage out-of-the-box thinking create the perfect opportunity for creativity to flourish. Virtual team-building games can help stimulate creative problem-solving skills and get the players to develop innovative approaches to different challenges, which can positively influence how they approach work-related tasks and projects.
The future of business is undeniably intertwined with remote working practices. This makes it more important than ever for companies to prioritize creating the same sense of camaraderie and shared experiences that physical office spaces once provided. From igniting creativity to reinforcing communication skills, all of the benefits offered by virtual team-building games reaffirm their role in cultivating engaged, cohesive, and high-performing remote teams.
1. Build Your Bucket List
Breaking the ice is essential for teams working remotely. The “bucket list challenge” game is one of the best remote team-building activities for new members of online teams to get to know each other.
To play, hold a video conference and tell team members they have five minutes to come up with their ultimate bucket list of things they’d love to do in their lifetime. Then they share their lists with everyone else on the team. It’s usually great fun: People like to hear about other people’s dreams, and sometimes they discover they have things in common. But you can take it further. Say two team members find they have the same ambition. Provided it’s achievable (like learning Spanish, rather than flying to the moon,) they can encourage each other to work on their mutual goal.
This game should take 10–15 minutes. Longer than that, and it drags. What’s great is there’s no theoretical player limit — so use your discretion with regard to the time available.
2. Team-Building Online Bingo
Did you know that online bingo is one of the most popular casino games around? That’s because online bingo games are tremendously social, with a fun, competitive element as well as live chat functionality. No wonder teams are starting to play bingo online as a way to have a fun social break.
Online bingo games typically involve filling spaces on a bingo board with numbers that are called out or, in the case of online casino variants, randomly generated. To play bingo online for team-building purposes, it’s necessary to adapt the formula somewhat. Start by creating a bingo card template that replaces bingo numbers with relatable phrases. A good example would be things that people in the team have done in the past: “Took a coffee break,” “woke up late,” “fell asleep at desk,” “wore stretch pants to a video meeting,” and so on. The card should be in a format that team members can easily mark up with a tool like Paint. It becomes a more collaborative process if the team members think up phrases themselves.
Once you’ve got a pool of suitable phrases, it’s time to generate and distribute bingo cards. There are several bingo card generators online that you can feed phrases into. Next, call everyone to the virtual bingo room on Zoom. Choose someone to be the moderator. The moderator calls out a phrase randomly and gives players time to look for it on their cards. Anyone who has that phrase on their card marks the space. The winner is the first player to complete a vertical, horizontal, or diagonal row that matches the moderator’s card. A prize like an online gift card can increase the motivation factor.
A game of team-building online bingo should take 10 minutes on average. As many players can take part as there are members of the team.
3. Can You Hear Me Now?
The best virtual team-building activities succeed because they give all team members a chance to shine. Of course, not all people shine in the same way. A good set of virtual team-building games should include activities that play to team members’ different strengths. “Can you hear me now?” is a popular online team game that draws on abstract thinking and communication skills and can be played over any video-conferencing software.
To play, choose one person to be the Describer. The other players are the Artists. The Describer must think of an object and explain how to draw it to the Artists. It could be a Christmas tree, a bird, a bicycle, whatever. The trick is that the Describer can only use geometric terms. The Describer can say things like “draw a half circle,” then “draw two straight lines from the edges that meet underneath the circle” (this would be an ice-cream cone.) What they can’t do is name anything, like “the letter X.” The Artists use their drawings to guess the object.
Three minutes is usually enough for a round of this fun game. Artists who guess the object correctly get a point each, and it’s a great idea to award the winning Artist a suitable prize. Then, you can change roles. Choose how many rounds to play according to the size of your team and how much time you’ve got.
4. Alien Visitors
This is one of the best online team-building games for communication and creative thinking. One team member is chosen to be the moderator. The remaining team members form groups of three or four. The moderator reads the following script:
“Aliens are visiting Earth and would like to learn about your company. Being aliens, they don’t speak American, and they’re evidently pressed for time, so they need a snappy explanation of what the company does in five symbols or pictures.”
The groups then discuss among themselves what those five images should be. Each group then uploads their five images and can vote on which ones best describe the company. It’s a great way for team members and leaders to gain insight into how each other thinks.
The game takes 30 minutes to an hour. The number of players depends on the available time, but up to 10 groups of 3–4 people is a manageable number. You could offer an attractive prize for the most alien-friendly answer.
5. Murder Mystery
Also known as Mafia, Werewolf is a classic murder mystery game that you can play online with your time. It’s basically a “whodunnit” challenge for 6–16 players with different roles. The most basic version has three roles: werewolves, villagers, and a moderator. A good ratio of werewolves to villagers is 1:3.
The moderator messages everyone to tell them their roles, and the game starts. Pick a video app that everyone can use — Zoom works just fine. There are two phases: Night and Day. At Night, all players close their eyes. The moderator tells the werewolves to open their eyes, they message each other privately to pick a “victim,” and close their eyes again.
In the Day phase, the moderator tells everyone to open their eyes and says who “died” the night before. The “living” players discuss who the werewolves could be. This may well test the werewolves’ ability to bluff. A player can accuse someone of being a werewolf at any time and call for a vote to eliminate them. If more than half the players vote in favor, the accused person is out of the game, and Night begins again. This continues until one side is eliminated.
Werewolf is a great game for developing subtle interpersonal skills, as well as having a good laugh along the way. Once a team has got the hang of it, a game takes about 30 minutes.
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