Super-intern
10 Virtual Team Building Activities 2021
- 2021-05-17 13:40:50
Image credit: aeromental.com
- The Zombie Apocalypse Scenario
Difficulty: ★★★★
Duration: 30-45 min
Platform: Zoom, Google Meet, etc
Participants: 2-10
Have you ever imagined what it’s like in the scenario of a zombie apocalypse? Imagine you are stranded in your house, and you’re needed to evacuate to a local shelter. Like the “deserted island scenario,” provide a list of tools for your co-workers to choose from that could help them survive on their way to the shelter. The longer the list, the more interesting the game will be. Let your co-workers choose three items that they prioritize and explain why they choose those items. After explaining, pause for 5 minutes and give everyone a chance to decide whether they want to change their option and explain why they change their choice. Here is a list of example of items that you can choose when you are playing The Zombie Apocalypse:
- Knife/Cleaver
- A Bag with Food & Water
- First Aid Kit
- Rope
- Baseball bat
- Wrench
- Crowbar
- Multi-tool Kit
- Bandages Torchlight
- Research Paper
- Shotgun with 4 round
- Glock 9 with 15 round
- Screwdriver
- Car with little fuel
- Alarm Clock
- Pepper spray
To add more fun to the activity, you can devise situations such as obstacles they’re facing to reach their destination. This activity’s objective is to simply have fun and promote their creative thinking to adapt to different situations.
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- Game Application
Difficulty: ★★★
Duration: Depends on the type of game
Platform: Online games
Participants: Depends on the type of game
What’s better than having fun? Are you a gamer, or are you familiar with online games such as Among Us. Among Us is one of the most engaging online games where co-workers can participate to work out their objectives while finding the imposter that wants to kill everybody in the ship.These games promote collaboration thinking & problem solving while also promote creative thinking on how you want to kill your crewmates. Not a fan of this game? There are also many other online games platforms as well, such as Pandemic & Carcassonne.
Image credit: https://martin-ueding.de/posts/emoji-keyboards/
- Guess the Emoji Board
Difficulty: ★
Duration: 3-5 min per rounds
Platform: Zoom, Google Meet, etc
Participants: 2-10
What better than expressing yourself virtually? It’s none other than emojis! This activity is simple. First, send a list of the players to all participants. Then, give them five minutes to guess each person’s five most used emojis. After five minutes, reveal the correct answers to the participants. The person to recognize the right emojis is declared the winner.
Image credit: https://unsplash.com/photos/o2eJcEYkVa0
- Pancakes vs Waffles
Difficulty: ★★
Duration: Not limited
Platform: Zoom, Google Meet, etc
Participants: 5-10
Pancakes vs Waffles is a fun game that could be played in a large group of people. The main objective of this game is to engage co-workers in friendly debate and unanimous decision making, which can be helpful in building relationships for remote teams.
This is how you play “Pancakes vs Waffles”:
- Announce the great debate; either pancakes or waffles are going to disappear from existence and your team has to make the choice.
- When the team decides, anyone can nominate a new nomination. For example, if waffles survived the first round then someone may suggest cakes.
- Then the nominations tend to scale up into existential questions quickly. Cats or love? Love or water?
The duration of this game is not limited,you can play until your team is ready to move on. This game is a great way to engage with co-workers, especially introverts on your team, because everyone has an opinion about the trivial subjects to debate. You can play Pancakes vs Waffles over Zoom, Webex, Google Hangouts and other virtual meeting platforms.
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- Virtual Werewolf
Difficulty: ★★★★
Duration: 30-60 minutes
Platform: social platforms such as Zoom, Google Meet, etc
Participants: 5-15
Who isn’t familiar with the “Werewolf” game? In fact, Werewolf is one of the best virtual team building activities for remote working , as it is a game of speaking, careful observation and listening, decision making and voting as you seek to survive the night.
In order to start the game, players are required to draw roles of werewolves, villagers, medic and seer. The roles of werewolves are to kill all the participants except their comrades,villagers are required to vote werewolves off the island, medics can save a player from werewolves and seer can peer into participant’s soul to identify their wolf-status.In order to make the game more interesting,you can add roles such as hunter,witch and knight.
Then,the game master announces that night has fallen, and players are require to close their eyes.The game master ask the werewolves to wake-up and select their victim,followed by medic who select a person to save, and the seer who use their authority to identify a player’s status..Finally, the game master would announces the sun is rising and reveals player’s that become victim during the night.
Anyone who is killed by werewolves will become ghost and unable to speak for the rest of the game.The survivor debate who might be the werewolf , and then vote to either eliminate someone or skip the round.Repeat until you only have werewolf or villagers left to win the game.
Image credit: https://2020.igem.org/Team:UNSW_Australia/Education/Escape_Room
- Virtual Escape Room
Difficulty: ★★★★★
Duration: 60 minutes +
Platform: Social Platform, Zoom, Google Meet, etc
Participants: Unlimited
Is it true that you are prepared for a game that is fun, testing, and consistently gives you a couple of "Wow!" minutes? At this point, you're prepared for the Virtual Escape Room. This virtual getaway room will change your co-workers’ correspondence and bring them closer!
Virtual escape rooms give a vivid and challenging experience for groups of various sorts, whether in the workplace, at home, or both! Players get similar riddles and assignments to solve as if they’re in an actual escape room while pursuing a common objective –escaping! Played through Zoom, The Virtual Escape Room is guided by a host in the room with a live camera feed. Groups will coordinate their guide through the experience while getting pieces of information in their computerized dashboard to address confounds and complete their main goal in an hour!
With topics like breaking out of jail, tracking down the gold, or solving an art heist, this is an exciting method to increase greater communication, bond, find out about your remote co-workers personality, and have a good time!
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- Virtual Lunch Session
Difficulty: ★
Duration: Not limited
Platform: Zoom, Google Meet, etc
Participants: Not limited
There could be no more excellent approach to get a group together than over food. Facilitating week after week or month to month virtual lunch sessions is an extraordinary method to interface with your group and monitor how everybody is getting along. Dell and Deloitte collaborated to lead a contextual investigation on the idea of virtual socializing. Here are their discoveries:
A lack of structure, food, and video conferencing is the key to a successful virtual socializing session.
- Virtual socializing sessions can normalize flexibility and drive employees engagement within a flexible workforce
- Virtual socializing sessions encourage the development of innovative ideas
- Team lunches are only one way to create positive social experiences virtually
Image credit: unsplash.com/photos/m4sGYaHYN5o
- Virtual Game Night
Difficulty: ★★
Duration: Depends on the game
Platform: Zoom, Google Meet, etc
Participants: Depends on the game
Who says games such as Monopoly, Bingo, Pictionary, and even Mahjong are required to play face to face? All these fun activities can be hosted online as well, via platforms such as Zoom, Google Meet & other various platforms. The objective is to let your co-workers have some fun time together and increase their relationship through virtual means.
Image credit: http://2013.igem.org/Team:UGent/Survey
- Weekly Trivia Contest
Difficulty: ★★★
Duration: 30 minutes to 60 minutes
Platform: Gamification Platform
Participants: Not limited
What better than let you express your extra knowledge? Pop quiz! Organize a weekly quiz through a gamification platform to let your co-workers answer trivia questions. You can schedule quizzes to go out via email multiple times per week and track winners via a gamified leaderboard. This activity could help the remote teams to connect & engage in a fun way while increasing their knowledge.
Image credit :he.wikipedia.org/wiki/הזמר_במסכה_(תוכנית_טלוויזיה_אמריקאית)
- Guess the Singer
Difficulty: ★★★
Duration: 15 - 20 minutes per round
Platform: Zoom, Google Meet, etc
Participants: 5-10
Have you watched the Korean reality show, “The Masked Singer”, where you need to guess the identity of the singer. The rules are simple, through Zoom or Google Meet platform, all the participants are required to put an anonymous name, close their camera, and take turns singing. The participants who guess the correct answer is the winner.
Team Building for Remote Workers
The traditional workplace has experienced a major challenge with COVID-19. Many organisations have been forced to change and adapt to working remotely as the government imposes strict lockdown restrictions in the nation.
There are many benefits of working remotely like more flexibility, independence, and work-life balance.
Yet, working remotely could have some drawbacks that people do not usually notice.
Team building is a process of transforming a group of individuals into a cohesive team where everyone works together to achieve missions and goals.
Team building strengthens the bonds among members of a community and the individual participants value each other’s talents when working for shared values.
Team building usually consists of various physical activities involving collaborative tasks to improve the relationship among members. With the advancement of technology nowadays, team building can be held virtually too!
While every employee is separated geographically, team building can be conducted through an online platform by using video conferencing tools, or a gamification system.
- Feeling isolated
Face-to-face interactions in a conventional working environment promotes a sense of togetherness.
Feelings of social isolation develop when workers are geographically separated. Sense of social presence and community are very critical to minimize the feelings of social isolation.
When isolation becomes a regular occurrence, it can have a negative impact on our health and well-being.
- Lack of motivation
Without an office setting, working remotely could be boring and demotivating.
Not being able to socialise with other coworkers can be stressful for some people. Or they might start to procrastinate by doing house chores, or watching a movie during work time.
Benefits of Virtual Team Building
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- Develop sense of belonging
The rise of connectivity enhances the sense of belonging of the employees to the community, and most specifically to their social network. It’s very important for co-workers to get to know and understand each other.
- Building trust
Team building events show the organisation’s appreciation for the employees beyond the usual work responsibilities. It helps them to improve their skills and establish good interpersonal relationships which boost team cohesion and trust among employees.
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- Identifying traits
People tend to adhere to their assigned tasks when going through their everyday work. This does not necessarily have a complete description of a person’s strengths and limitations.
Team building helps leaders to recognise and identify the traits of employees. This will then help unlock the potential of employees and make better decisions for the organisation.
