6 Easy and Effective Virtual Team Building Activities

Updated: August 08, 2022

The past few weeks have created one of the biggest shifts in the way we work as we know it. Yes, remote work has been steadily increasing for some time now, but within the blink of an eye, organizations, leadership, and managers have been forced to deal with the challenges of having a completely remote workforce. Fortunately, there are things to help with the challenge of keeping a team together like virtual team building activities.

As remote work has increased over the years, the marketplace has been producing more and more solutions to help with the challenges that come with a remote workforce. One of the biggest challenges for organizations and leaders of a remote workforce is: how do we engage remote employees and continue to keep that team feeling while working in different physical locations?

Why Do We Need Virtual Team Building?

At the heart of any organization is its people working on a common goal together. Without that team feeling, we feel isolated and working on things that don’t make us feel connected or whole. By bringing in a virtual team building activity, we can bridge that gap back towards being a team even though we aren’t physically together. 

What is Virtual Team Building?

Virtual team building is the practice of creating a team feeling for remote employees. It allows them to interact in ways they miss within the normal remote working process. Not having employees work from one physical workplace takes a different approach to team building, but we’ve come to help to outline a few very doable options to implement.

1. 10-minute Coffee Catch Up

The 10-minute coffee catch-up is a quick way to connect over a cup of hot joe. Use a video conferencing app like Zoom. Schedule a time with a few colleagues. The scheduled catch up allows you to plan ahead and take a 10-minute break with friends from afar. Connect over what’s new in the office or even what’s going on personally. That’s the joy of catching up over some hot coffee - you never know what’s going to come from it. 

2. Virtual Scavenger Hunt

A scavenger hunt is a classic way to bring teams together. However, it typically means having employees be in the same location. That’s no longer the case with the modern approach of a virtual scavenger hunt. With Scavify, you can have a week-long virtual scavenger hunt that allows employees to compete against each other via a mobile app. The app allows for a real-time leaderboard, community feed and more to bring the awesomeness of a scavenger hunt right to your employees - wherever they may be. 

3. What Are You Watching?

The number one question in a modern workplace today is “so what are you watching these days?”. Don’t let remote work life get in the way of finding out the latest shows you’re missing on your favorite streaming service. Take 5 minutes and call up some colleagues to go around and catch up on what you’re all watching. No spoilers! 

4. What I Like Most About Remote Life

Similarly to the coffee catch up, we’ll use a conferencing app (another one we like is Uberconference) with a group of 10. There will be some disadvantages to working remotely, so be sure to take some time to remember the things you love about it. Just take 2 minutes and come up with some elements of the remote work life that you love. It’s surprising to hear the things that each one of us enjoys - and take for granted! Add an extra twist by voting on the best answer and providing a reward to whoever comes up with the best answer. 

5. Who Said That?

Get a group of 10 together. Appoint a host to run this session (don’t worry you can switch hosts next time). We’re going to find out how much we know about each other. Have everyone submit an unusual but true fact about them to the host. The host will go around saying the facts. The other 9 will vote on who they think it is. The person with the least votes wins! You can use a standard chatting solution like Slack or Google Chat. 

6. Virtual Water Cooler

A water cooler is the original casual team builder. Without even realizing it, we collect around the water cooler to take a break and catch up with a colleague. Use Slack or a group chat on Google Chat to allow for the casual conversation to unfold. 

Although it may feel a little different at first, we can still have those same physical bonds built virtually with some of the activities listed above. Hopefully, this roundup helps you find some easy and doable ways to keep that team feeling going,