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How do you build camaraderie amongst your team when your team is remote? When it comes to maintaining company culture, it’s important to create a fun atmosphere while simultaneously building employee morale. This is especially important for distributed teams that don’t see one another on a daily basis. It’s common for team members to feel isolated and alone as they work remotely.
To help create meaningful interaction, which will strengthen relationships and build trust, it’s important to engage with fellow remote employees more frequently on non-work topics. This is where hosting a virtual team building activity can recreate the non-work conversations that happen on coffee breaks and during company outings. It’s these face to face interactions that will help set remote team members up to thrive in their new normal, helping employees working from home feel connected to their organization. Virtual team-building exercises can be added to any video conference call or team meeting.
Keep reading for more details about what each of these activities entails.
Many of the activities on the list include some sort of kit or care package that is shipped to your remote workers’ door prior to the event. It’s often these kits, in combination with the enthusiasm and energy of the host, that make these virtual events more engaging and entertaining. Read below to learn what makes a good host. Imagine being responsible for the most fun your team will ever have while they work from home!
If you were to plan an in-person team outing for your office or department, wouldn’t you want to go off-site and leave the logistics to an expert or event planner? Of course! You would do research and find a fun tour, unique venue or activity and let the professionals curate the desired experience you were looking for. The same goes for putting together a virtual team building activity or online corporate “outing”. Let the professionals make your life easier.
At City Brew Tours, we are experts at creating unforgettable and memorable team building opportunities for companies with teams as small as four people and as large as 400. As remote work environments become the new norm for one-third of the workforce, we took this opportunity to share what we feel are essential components of a successful virtual team building event.
Utilizing the same entertaining and interactive methods that our City Brew Tours guides use on tours, this virtual happy hour is guided beer entertainment that will explore the intricacies of pairing beer and cheese while adding a fun interactive spin to the existing video chat with co-workers or clients. This beer and cheesy awesomeness is 60-90 minutes and will give your team the chance to discover new pairings, learn how professionals appraise a beer and present their favorite combos to fellow teammates. Learn more about these events here.
Whether you have a team in the middle of an important project or just completed it, a Tea and Mindfulness experience is a great way to unwind and destress you and your co-workers.
Learn how to design and prepare you own glamorous charcuterie board that is sure to be a show-stopper at any get-together. An expert event host will lead you and your team as you create attractive, mouthwatering boards complete with a salami rose, natural honeycomb, gourmet smoked meats, artisanal cheeses, and other sharable treats. Discover how you can bond with your team over the Charcuterie Board Experience.
Looking to include not just your employees but their families. We recommend a virtual paint night event. PaintBar offers virtual paint sessions and will ship you your essential paint kit to be ready to channel you and your team’s creativity.
While your team can’t all get to the bar together, you can still recreate the camaraderie found through bar trivia over Zoom. BreakIQ offers an innovative approach to Virtual Pub Trivia by maximizing fun by picking the right content to encourage more participation and team discussion. Though it can be a bit pricey compared to other activities. Any bar trivia would be incomplete without all participants bringing their favorite beer; whether that beverage is tea or beer… not wine 🙂
Indulge your senses in some culinary magic with your fellow employees as everyone cooks a meal together. With live chef-led instruction, selected dishes can fit your team’s culture and experience level. Life at the Table offers virtual culinary classes but each participant will have to provide their own ingredients.
What’s the best part of camping? Ghost stories and S’mores! Sit out around the virtual campfire as MuseumHacks offers their mini campfire experience which includes participants’ own S’mores kit.
If you have an enthusiastic and energized host, you could create a fun virtual scavenger hunt. If you’re looking to leave it to the professionals, CityHunt offers an online scavenger hunt over Zoom and their app.
Hire a comedian to do some stand-up and improv games. This is sure to lighten the mood, make them feel less isolated and loosen everyone up. This is sure to have people laughing and enjoying themselves. Like most other activities, we recommend cracking open your favorite beverage during their set.
There are lots of options when it comes to planning a virtual team building event. No matter which option you choose, leave it up to the professionals to put on experience that will be entertaining, engaging and most importantly fun!
All of our expert beer guides strive to entertain, educate, and captivate guests when running in-person and at-home craft beer experiences. In order to keep the energy of a video call going, the facilitator or host should be energetic and passionate. It’s important that the host asks the audience questions. This is a great way to keep people engaged and having fun.
A host should lead a fun ice breaker for everyone to loosen up before getting into any programming. Icebreakers can range in duration and style. At City Brew Tours, we like an icebreaker that combines a bit of topic-specific information (what is your favorite beer) and personal information that can help drive camaraderie and team bonding. The goal of a well thought out icebreaker is to get team members feeling relaxed and ready to engage one another. The host should be less concerned about what they are saying and focusing on how the audience is receiving the information. Here are our favorite icebreaker questions:
It’s important that the host keeps things moving and is aware of timing so chit chat doesn’t take away from the bonding activities. This is also a great time for the host to jot down a few notes about each of the participants based on their icebreaker answers. You could even save this information and turn it into online games.
After the icebreaker, it’s time for an activity that’s fun and interactive with the goal to get everyone’s mind off their day-to-day responsibilities. The host should set the stage for employee engagement. The activity shouldn’t be too personal that could make someone feel uncomfortable. Check out our list above for professionally run virtual team building activities and online games. Throughout this activity, unless it’s required, we suggest the host refrain from group chat text function on video conferencing software as it can often distract participants.
Depending on the programming, we suggest an activity be no more than 3 hours and recommend 60-120 minutes as the sweet spot. It’s important to build out little breaks throughout these activities in case people want to get a snack or use the restrooms. This is especially important for distributed teams in different time zones. You’ll want to consider participants’ meal times will vary between time zones. Whichever platform you choose to use for your virtual or online team building event, you should make sure the platform offers picture sharing and screen sharing capabilities.
If you are interested in our craft beer experiences, let us entertain, educate, and captivate your co-workers, clients or meeting attendees with one of our at-home craft beer experiences offered over video conference. We will work with you to craft a custom beer experience that meets your event budget and corporate needs
Contact us today to get started, and raise a glass to a well-crafted virtual team building or corporate event!
