Planning a digital team building event is no easy feat. One of the toughest aspects is finding the right activities to suit your group, budget, and availability. Plus, with a virtual event, you also need to consider what translates well to (or thrives in) a digital space.
In this guide, we’ll take you through some of our favorite digital team building activity ideas. Plus, we’ll share a fun way to make your remote team building event catering even more engaging than before.
Team building and icebreaker activities are powerful ways to bring people together, build trust, boost employee engagement, and reinforce your company culture. Let’s take a look at some of the top digital team building activities for your remote team members to take part in.
Sometimes the best way to learn things is visually. Invite your team members to use screen sharing or a digital whiteboard to recreate their life in drawings for you. This can be a really fun way to learn about someone’s interests, passions, and life story.
Do this activity in real time to make it more challenging, or ask people to prepare their board in advance of your meeting. Once you’re done with your video conference, save the digital images somewhere so you can reflect on everyone’s whiteboard masterpieces.
See who has the best problem solving skills and work together to escape in this popular team building game experience. Solve clues, navigate the digital space, and try to break out before the timer runs out.
Look for a virtual escape room that’s fully managed with a facilitator, so everyone in your team can fully take part. Escape rooms are great ways to get everyone thinking and unite in search of a solution — a useful skill in business.
Your digital team activities don’t have to be centered around a work skill. Take some time out for more relaxed team bonding with a few online games over a video call.
Ask everyone for their favorite online games and pull a new suggestion for each virtual game night. There’s lots of variety here so you can bring people together whether they love Pictionary and Scrabble, or prefer video games like Mario Kart or World of Warcraft.
While there’s less talking during a movie night than a traditional team meeting, they still make a great option for remote team building. After all, laughing or crying over the best (or worst) film always brings people together.
Schedule an evening slot for your virtual movie night, or make it a daytime watch during the festive period. Check in with people for their suggestions or theme the activity around a season, celebration, genre, or time period.
Most of us have heard of bucket lists, but they’re often things we keep private. For a new way to build relationships across remote teams, ask everyone to share some of the items on their bucket list or goal list.
This is a really interesting way to get to know the people around you, outside of the typical workday. You can discover someone’s travel goals, career ideas, passion projects, and more. If sharing your big bucket list feels too revealing or complicated, ask people to keep it simple instead and theme it around travel goals, lifelong learning goals, or random non-serious goals.
Keep things super casual with a pub trivia quiz and see who in your team is a true expert at sport, music, or movies. This works well as a standalone activity on a Friday afternoon video conferencing call, or as part of a wider virtual company retreat or team building day.
Set up your own trivia quiz or ask an outside provider to put one together for you. Feature rounds on well-known topics like TV and history, or theme your whole quiz around a moment, genre, or celebrity. Throw in some fun rounds too — like a problem solving round, or an emoji guessing round.
Transform your usual team lunch with a team-based lunch and learn. All you need for this virtual event is a video conference call, a host, and something new to explore.
We love the idea of using a lunch and learn event as a way to get to know your team better. You could run through how to turn your idea into a profitable passion project, show people how to create awesome graphics, or give a demo on how to begin knitting. There’s so many great topics you could host a lunch and learn on, and it’s a super way to build those deeper relationships with your team.
If your team members love to sing their heart out, a virtual karaoke session can be a fun activity to help bring them together. Build a playlist together, take requests, and set the stage for solos, duets, or everyone singing at once.
Singing to your favorite pop hits might not seem like it has a direct impact on the workplace, but those fun moments can help people feel closer to each other. Plus, we’re sure you’ll walk away with a few fond memories you can reminisce about over coffee.
While you can’t always hop on a plane and go for an adventure around every city across the world, you can ask your remote team members to share a little more about the place they live and love.
This virtual activity is a great way to understand more about each other beyond the work environment. Ask team members to talk about local cuisine, their favorite places to relax, the best photo spots, and more. It helps give your team members something new to talk about, and they get a glimpse into a colleague’s life beyond work.
For a relaxed take on a digital team building activity, try a virtual happy hour. Gather everyone in a video call, encourage people to bring a drink of their choice, and have fun.
Virtual happy hours are a lot like in-person ones, but they work across the distance. It’s a great way to get together for some chill time that’s outside your regular work activity. To make your happy hour even more fun, send Hoppier cards to your remote guests so they can order something special from a local vendor.
If a virtual happy hour feels a little too lively, a virtual coffee break is a cozy alternative. Instead of cocktails or beer, your favorite remote workers can show up to your next virtual meeting with a cup of specialty coffee and a donut instead.
When you work remotely, water cooler moments don’t happen. A virtual coffee date is a fun way to recreate some of that atmosphere. Schedule these regularly so people look forward to them as a way to meet up with others and build relationships.
We’ve all heard of show and tell. Normally, it’s something you’d do in school to introduce people to your favorite stuffed animal, or your new pet. Take that time-honored icebreaker game and bring it to your remote team with a grown-up show and tell.
Add a show and tell segment to your next team meeting as a way to get to know each other better. Take it in turns to show up with an object or photo of something that means a lot to you, so people can build a bigger picture of who you are apart from your fun taste in GIFs.
There’s something exciting about planning a dream vacation, even if you can’t make it a reality just yet. Take that joy and bring it to your virtual team with an activity where you share your ideal vacation anonymously and others have to guess whose is whose.
This is a fun take on a round of icebreaker questions about vacations or your future life goals. Have everyone prepare a digital whiteboard or file with their dream vacation ideas ahead of the video chat, then see if you can vote and figure out which trip belongs to which team member. If there’s room in the budget, maybe you could even surprise everyone with a Hoppier card towards some fun vacation accessories.
The holidays are the perfect time for giving and for building lasting memories with the people around you — and that includes your teammates. Set up a remote gift exchange as a thoughtful way to show how much you care about the people you work with.
To make your remote gift exchange super easy, use Hoppier to send virtual credit cards out to your remote employees with a set budget. They can then use this balance to buy the gifts and have them mailed out to their recipient. Then, open the gifts together at a scheduled online meeting.
Digital team building activities don’t just have to happen once in a blue moon. You could consider making them a regular part of your culture — like with the addition of some monthly interest groups or clubs.
Suggest the idea to your remote work pals and see what they come up with. You could host a book club, dinner club, movie club, trivia quiz club, or anything that suits your team’s interests. These work best as video calls in small groups, so you don’t get too overwhelmed and there’s space for everyone to jump into the conversation freely.
When we think of virtual team building games, one of the most popular is a scavenger hunt. While you can’t head out on an adventure around your local area, you can do an at-home version that’s just as fun.
Put together a scavenger hunt list and ask your remote team members to search around their home for the objects. The first person or team to come back with their items wins. To make things even more interesting and encourage some friendly competition, use a Hoppier virtual credit card as the reward.
You don’t always need to do something super active to bring everyone together. We love the idea of bringing your coworkers together to create a digital photo album or library of images that represents who you all are individually and as a team.
This is a really sweet team building idea that can help get conversations going. As you’re going through personal, family, and work trip snaps you start to build a better picture of the people you work with everyday. Plus, you’re working on your teamwork skills as you refine the image selection and put together your final masterpiece.
When you’re a remote worker in an office based job you don’t always move around a whole lot. Shake things up and get everyone moving with a virtual dance party as a lively way to have fun together.
Put together an amazing playlist and ask your team to decorate the space behind them with brightly colored decorations, then get dancing to some awesome tunes. Not everyone is on board with dancing in front of people, no matter how great they think their coworkers are, so check in with your team first to see if they’d love or loathe something so bold.
There’s definitely a lot to be gained from adding some fun, non-work focused digital team building activities into your schedule. If you’re looking for something a little more corporate yet still fun, a virtual company innovation challenge is the way to go.
Bring your people together in a team meeting to brainstorm ideas or tackle an exciting new challenge. Think of this as a hackathon, but you can focus on any topic, question, or problem that you want. This is a great way to get people thinking, problem solving, and working together as a team to come up with something that’s bigger than all of you individually.
While it’s not a specific team building activity, we think there’s a lot of value to be had from creating a dedicated chill space for your remote team to talk in. It’s the kind of online team building exercise that keeps giving beyond your initial effort.
Create a Slack channel or another space where everyone can just feel free to say what’s on their mind. Encourage people to share a GIF of how they’re feeling, their favorite dog photos, a snap of their desk, or an adorable family photo. It’s everyone’s space where they can be part of the casual water cooler style conversation, no matter what time zone they’re in.
Virtual events can be an amazing way to bring people together and create lasting bonds between coworkers. Not only that, but you can use your digital team building activities to focus on key areas for your business too — like company culture, innovation, or communication.
To throw an impressive virtual event, you’ll want to take things beyond the ordinary. Get imaginative with your event catering with the help of Hoppier.
With Hoppier, you can put the power of choice in the hands of your virtual team members. Set up a program, send them a virtual credit card, and encourage them to order food, drinks, or snacks from their favorite local place. It’s a great way to show gratitude, give your coworkers freedom, and support local vendors. Plus, it’s way easier to manage than a complicated cross-country catering order.
It’s easy to get started with Hoppier. Simply set up a program, give it a catchy name, and customize the experience with an emoji. Personalize your virtual card with your company colors and logo, then set the basics like your spending limit and when the card is valid.
The customization options don’t stop there. You can also create a themed experience by narrowing down your choice of vendors. Hosting a movie night? Handpick a selection of entertainment providers and snack vendors to create a fun, curated moment. You can even use Hoppier cards as a unique reward for winning a team quiz or dance off.
One of the best things about Hoppier is the freedom. You can customize your card in so many different ways, your employees can choose where to order from, and you’re free from being tied into a complex and costly catering or supplies arrangement. That means you can focus on throwing an epic digital team building event — instead of worrying about catering.
Digital team building events give you a powerful route to bringing your team together and getting everyone focused on a goal. Whether you want to reinforce your company values or simply help people make friends across your teams, these virtual events are an amazing way to do that.
Take inspiration from these digital team building activity ideas to put together the kind of event that makes an impact. Once you’ve got the perfect ideas, check out our webinar on the best virtual event tools to help you find an ideal platform for your team get-together. If you’re ready to step beyond a Zoom call this webinar is a must watch.
Ready to 2x your global engagement at your next event, with Ox stress?
Make Hoppier your unfair advantage today, schedule a demo
Ready to 2x your global engagement at your next event, with Ox stress?
Make Hoppier your unfair advantage today, schedule a demo
Ready to 2x your global engagement at your next event, with Ox stress?
Make Hoppier your unfair advantage today, schedule a demo
Ready to 2x your global engagement at your next event, with Ox stress?
Make Hoppier your unfair advantage today, schedule a demo
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