10 Digital Team Building Activities For Fun And Engagement
The past couple of years has seen the rise of remote workers. An Owl Labs study found that, globally, 16 percent of businesses are fully remote.
Remote teams are becoming the norm for companies that must adapt by cultivating a virtual team environment.
But this shift makes team building more challenging than it used to be when all the team members were in one place.
Team building was simpler when colleagues could easily ask questions, chat, go out for lunch, grab drinks and form personal connections organically.
So what is the solution to team building in the era of remote teams?
It is simple: virtual team building is the answer.
What Is Virtual Team Building?
Virtual team building turns individual team members into a cohesive unit of remote employees.
Virtual team building is a set of activities that:
- Build trust among team members
- Develop team members
- Bring unity to the team
- Help conduct a virtual meeting
- Clarify team norms and company culture
These can include activities such as:
- Quizzes
- Virtual escape rooms
- Group challenges
- Online office games
These activities help develop a culture of cooperation and support for other team members.
The remote team members must work cooperatively to deliver your business needs while scattered across many locations.
A cohesive team is crucial to success because it has been shown that efficiency and performance both improve when team members trust each other.
Are Virtual Teams Effective?
Yes! It seems that remote teams can be just as effective as traditional teams.
According to 451 Research, 69 percent of enterprises say that 75 percent of their workforce can work effectively in remote teams.
Are Remote Team Members Happy?
Yes again!
Employees are happy with these changes – and not only that, but they also save time and money on commuting.
So there seems to be no downside to this trend!
A survey from GitLab even found that 62 percent of respondents would consider leaving for an organization with a company culture of remote workers.
Planning A Virtual Team Building Event
Virtual team-building activities can be hard to arrange.
One of the hardest things is finding the best activities to suit your virtual team, budget, and availability.
Plus, with virtual team-building activities, you must find out what works well in a digital space and what does not.
This guide will take you through some of the best virtual team-building activities and hopefully give you plenty of ideas for your next digital team-building activity session.
And you will learn how to make future remote team-building events more fun and engaging than before!
Where To Begin With Virtual Team Building?
A reliable guide to virtual team building is to start with the simplest activities and work your way up.
Start with ice-breakers and warm-up games, followed by the main event conducted in breakout rooms – depending on the size of your remote team and the number of virtual team-building activities you want to use.
Here are some of the best virtual team-building activities, from ice-breakers to juicier events.
The Ice-Breakers And Warm-Ups
Let’s begin with the best ice-breakers and warm-ups for your remote teams.
1) Virtual Rock Paper Scissors Tournament
Virtual team-building games do not have to be complicated. They can even be simple!
Open your favorite remote teams’ environment and try a virtual version of the classic game in real-time.
Two people square off, with the winner playing the next team member.
Not only is this fun, but it is also a great way to:
- Test reflexes
- Test responsiveness
- Encourage spontaneity
- Develop relationships
Plus, it can even be a great warm-up before a brainstorming session.
As far as virtual team-building ideas go, this is a brilliant start to any team-building event.
2) Minute To Win It Online
Virtual team-building exercises can be fun and this interactive game is a prime example.
Gather your virtual team together and have team members compete against each other in a series of minute-long games.
Each game is a bit ridiculous by design and uses everyday materials.
Any team member can play, regardless of skill, and the remote team at the end with the most winning rounds takes home the prize! An excellent virtual team-building exercise.
3) Draw My Life
The best way to learn is often visually, which is one of the best aspects of the virtual world.
Get your team members to use screen sharing or a digital whiteboard to recreate their life in drawings for you.
This can be a fun virtual team-building activity, and you might learn something wacky about a team member.
4) Learn A Life Story In Five Minutes
One of the best virtual team building ideas, this activity is ideally suited for remote team building.
Not only that, it is a brilliant exercise in:
- Listening
- Mirroring
- Learning about team members and their interests
- Building relationships
Divide your team members into pairs and put them in private virtual rooms.
Their partner has five minutes to tell the team member their life story. Once time is up, the listener must relay the whole story to the other team members as if it were a team meeting.
5) Virtual Werewolf Online Team Building Activity
A remote take on the classic communication and deduction game, Werewolf is a brilliant ice-breaking activity and one of the best virtual team-building activities.
Remote teams can struggle to develop any rapport, but this is one of the best remote team-building activities and is sure to hone your team’s negotiation and storytelling skills.
Team members are chosen secretly to be either werewolves or villagers.
It is the job of the villagers to reveal which team member is a werewolf using deductive reasoning and discussion. And the role of the werewolves is to use whatever deceptive means necessary to prevent being accused by their fellow team members.
The nature of this game is sure to inspire virtual team bonding and make the next few team meetings a little more suspicious.
Longer Virtual Team Building Ideas
Following the virtual team building ice-breakers and warmups, it is time to move on to some of the more substantial virtual team building activities which involve the entire team.
These range from virtual team-building games to virtual trivia. And each remote team-building exercise is sure to enhance the confidence, engagement, problem-solving and project management skills of the entire team.
6) Virtual Escape Room
The virtual escape room is one of the best virtual team-building activities for your team members.
The virtual team is divided into smaller teams that work against the clock to escape by solving riddles and completing challenges in a series of locked virtual escape rooms.
This virtual team-building game helps develop confidence in team members and helps them learn to work better in remote teams.
It also encourages team building in larger groups, uniting all the team members behind a common goal.
7) Virtual Treasure Hunt
Remote teams have enough trouble working together to overcome virtual team-building challenges already – so a virtual team treasure hunt might sound a bit too far.
But worry not! The treasure hunt is a brilliant virtual team-building activity that works to encourage teamwork and cooperation among team members.
Remote teams will race around the world utilizing VR locations, historical or fictional information, cryptic clues, and their intuition to solve puzzles.
Team members are put into breakout rooms where they can brainstorm and delegate tasks as they travel the world in search of treasure! Who knew that virtual team-building activities could be so fun?
8) Virtual Team Murder Mystery
A perfect team-building activity for uniting a group in fear!
Your remote teams will take part in a series of scenes in this virtual murder mystery game. Team members can either act as characters or play the role of detectives interviewing characters and studying the crime.
The game uses VR and live actors to overcome the virtual team-building challenges and is brilliant for:
- Developing creativity
- Improving storytelling
- Improving collaboration with team members
- Working productively in a remote team
- Developing improvisation skills
- Honing critical thinking and problem-solving skills
This one certainly has all the virtual team-building tools to make the next team meeting more lively!
9) Virtual Team Trivia
9) Virtual Team TriviaEveryone loves a quiz, so virtual team trivia is a brilliant virtual team bonding game.
And this game gives team members the chance to be on their favourite game show.
Distributed teams take part in a series of competitive challenges based on many of the most famous game show concepts in virtually recreated sets.
Each team member must contribute to the success of their virtual team. The remote teams play against each other for the pride of the virtual team office.
The virtual game show is brilliant virtual team building for:
- Boosting morale
- Fun for each team member
- Increasing knowledge
- Building trust and confidence
And it is sure to develop the creative and productive capacity across your remote teams.
10) Improv Online
The online improv session must be one of the most fun virtual team-building activities and certainly one of the best for team building – and it will make you appreciate the capacity of online office games.
The main features of great improvisation are the ability to be collaborative on the fly and openness.
Improv can sharpen wits, hone verbal acuity, heighten nonverbal communication and instill an implicit sense of trust between team members – it is one of the most effective virtual team-building exercises.
Some of the objectives of virtual improv are:
- Ensuring remote teams are still engaged with each other and the job
- Enhancing remote team communication skills
- Improving virtual team productivity
- Learning to use Video Conferencing to its fullest potential
- Providing fun for all your remote workers
- Building trust and confidence between virtual team members
- Stimulating creativity and innovation
Virtual improv is a fun virtual team-building game that develops many attributes required for a highly effective virtual team.
Virtual Team Building Activities Are Fun!
It may seem like an impossible task to bring a virtual team together – they are, by definition, disconnected.
But this blog has hopefully shown that this is not the case and that virtual team-building activities can be a fun and effective way of encouraging collaboration and engagement among remote teams.
Not only this, but they can also develop many skills required for a high-quality and efficient team, virtual or not.
So start planning your virtual team-building event today!
