Virtual Team Building Ideas for Remote and Hybrid Workers

The benefits of team building in the professional environment are vast. Building common understanding, allyship, and trust amongst your peers allows you to work more efficiently and better enjoy each other’s company and perspectives. Even if your peers are halfway across the globe, you can find success with team building work.

This article will function as a guide to understanding the various benefits of virtual team building and new virtual activities to take advantage of now.

Benefits of Virtual Team Building

Virtual teams face more difficulty building trust and rapport with each other than casual in-person teams. Since your peers will likely only see you on a video camera — and some potentially living in completely separate time zones — virtual team building can be very important.

Improved communication

Opening up communication between peers can be difficult if they aren’t comfortable with each other or haven’t established mutual respect. Virtual team-building exercises help people become more acquainted and communicate more effectively. When everyone works toward a common goal, it helps with bonding and helps ease the awkwardness so workers will be better equipped to work amongst themselves.

Enhanced morale and engagement

Despite our differences, workers need to engage with each other to feel more fulfilled at their workplace. At the very least they need to like each other. Not having any kind of communication or support from their teammates can make workers feel secluded and isolated, which negatively affects overall productivity and workplace culture.

Team Building activities can help bridge the gap between employees and their workplaces by helping them feel integrated into the greater workspace culture. Everyone wants to be accepted as a valuable member of the team. With activities that focus on bringing the best out of our peers, it’s possible!

Tips for Successful Virtual Team Building

Of course, not all team-building exercises are as successful as others. That’s why it’s important to put a lot of thought into the development of your itinerary and take input from every participant involved with the activities.

Scheduling and planning

Scheduling and planning are so important when it comes to making successful team-based activities. It’s almost inevitable that trying to herd any group of adults together will likely see at least one inevitable “Sorry, I can’t make it!" text. Don’t despair. People are busy!

Try and choose as convenient a time as possible for all team members. You don’t need to be completely deterred if someone drops last minute. Life happens fast, and going to a work meeting can’t always be our main priority. To keep everyone from feeling left out, plan multiple activities on different days to give people more chances to drop in. This alleviates the need to have everyone ready for a single day!

Engagement and participation

Who doesn’t love a little incentive to do a team-building exercise? You can recognize a team member’s participation by giving them little rewards such as gift cards or mementos. Rewards such as bonus time off or special workplace perks are OK, but be careful that these rewards are dolled out per the worker’s participation and not their performance. Rewards could easily backfire and build resentment if someone feels “left out" for all of their efforts.

Other ways to encourage engagement are choosing activities that are easy and accessible for many people. Game nights or trivia games are great. Higher-intensity games can be nice but, just like in school, not everyone feels comfortable or can play as effectively as others. Therefore, keep the comfort of your team members in mind and don’t be afraid to experiment to make sure everyone can be involved.

Feedback and improvement

Gathering feedback is instrumental to creating memorable future activities and alleviating any awkwardness that might have come up in earlier iterations. Collect feedback from workers and peers who were involved and see what worked and what didn’t. This continuous evaluation can help make future team exercise sessions even better!

Virtual Team-Building Activity Ideas

Here are some ideas for great virtual team building activities that can be done by anyone!

Online games

There are plenty of online games that offer multiplayer gameplay and can help foster fun and cooperation between co-workers.

The Jackbox Games catalog of party games offers plenty of fun and unique gameplay possibilities from written comedy to drawing and even trivia! While the games are sold on game catalog services such as Steam, almost any device can run Jackbox. Plus, anyone playing can join in from their phone making this a must-have party game for virtual or in-person events!

Skribbl.io is a Pictionary-type game that offers fun where players must draw a word or phrase and others must guess what was drawn to earn points. Whoever has the most points wins! With a cute art style and engaging, easy-to-understand gameplay, this is an amazing game for fun over a voice call or even text chat!

Many companies, such as Escapely, even offer fun and accessible virtual escape rooms to quiz the brains and intellectual reasoning of your peers. Experience a cool shared story with your workers and watch as they rely on each other’s greatest strengths to proceed and complete the game in time!

Virtual scavenger hunts

Virtual scavenger hunts are a way to learn more about co-workers by revealing some of the things they keep in their possession. A virtual scavenger hunt is essentially a checklist of objects or things to do in their own space to earn the most points. Examples could include a favorite coffee cup, a picture of a furry friend, or their favorite desk trinket!

This game is easy to construct and form teams, so different workers are bonded together and can collaborate on fulfilling the scavenger checklist. It’s great for fostering conversation, quick group problem-solving, and introducing small tokens of people’s personal lives to the community!

Solitaire as team-building activity

Card games like Solitaire are easy to foster community and business-centered thinking. Not only do they provide mental benefits such as improving concentration and problem-solving skills, but they can also be fantastic games to teach new skills and bring people together through the shared accumulation of gameplay knowledge!

Solitaire is by far one of the best card games for adults and professionals since there are so many different ways you can adapt its playing style. It can be scored to allow for competitive multiplayer, and it can be cooperative by sharing the same game. There are plenty of unique variations such as Scorpion Solitaire or Freecell Solitaire which can add difficulty tiers for players who are looking for different challenges.

Virtual Team Building Helps Everyone

Help your remote teams feel more connected and confident in each other and themselves with these amazing virtual team-building exercises! Creating amazing memories with your peers is a step toward seeing greater employee compatibility, focus, and productivity. If you’re looking for more amazing tips on games and activities at home and in the workplace, check out 247Solitaire for dozens of guides just like this one. Game on, and have fun!

DISCLAIMER: The games on this website are using PLAY (fake) money. No payouts will be awarded, there are no "winnings", as all games represented by 247 Games LLC are free to play. Play strictly for fun.