The lack of in-person interaction in remote teams can cause feelings of isolation and loneliness, impacting your team’s productivity. Scheduling virtual team building activities regularly strengthens interpersonal relationships, boosts morale, and promotes better team collaboration.

While you might be using video conferencing solutions like Zoom, Skype, or Microsoft Teams, it isn’t always easy to come up with exciting team building activities. That said, a little bit of creativity can go a long way in ensuring that your team feels connected and engages with their work in a meaningful way.

We have compiled a list of 11 non-yawn inducing virtual team building activities you can start using for your next team-building session.

‍1. Sing Your Heart Out In Karaoke

Whether you’re celebrating birthdays or helping the team unwind on a Friday night, you can’t really go wrong with karaoke. These sessions are straightforward to set up, and the purpose is to let everyone express themselves without restrictions.

Ask participants to pick a song and get its karaoke backing track. During the session, only the singer will keep their mic on as others enjoy the session. 

Need some karaoke song recommendations? Here are some of our favorites:

• Sweet Child O’ Mine - Guns N’ Roses
• Zombie - The Cranberries
• Someone Like You - Adele
• Dancing Queen - Abba
• Hey Jude - The Beatles (Technically, you can’t go wrong with any Beatles song)
• Africa - Toto
• I Want It That Way - BSB
• Wonderwall - Oasis
• Annie’s Song - John Denver

2. Host Virtual Scavenger Hunt

It is best to play the virtual scavenger hunt individually rather than in a team as the logistics are easier to work out. While you can use the team chat app to post photos to the clues, use a video conferencing app for better playability.

The rules for the virtual scavenger hunt are simple. The first person to find the item gets the point. The highest scorer wins the game.

Begin the hunt by providing clues. The clue could be broad like a breakfast item or more specific like cereal. The participants need to show the item on the screen to score points.

Here is an example list of items you can ask:

• Childhood/high school/teenage photo
• Favorite book
• Hand sanitizer
• Face mask
• Your desk
• The floss dance (Or any other trending dance)

3. Exercise Creativity Through a Virtual Improv Session

Virtual improv sessions let individuals exercise their creativity muscle as they are improvising on the fly. Here are two example improv exercises you can try:‍

• ‍Hype Person: In this game, the first person mentions a routine activity they did, and the next two people exaggerate the impact of the activity or the scene. For example, if a salesperson says, “I received a client email at 7 in the morning,” the hype person can say, “Did you hear that? They don’t need to get in touch with clients. Clients contact them!”‍
• ELI5: Ever visit the ‘explain like I’m 5’ sub Reddit? Ask team members to describe a simplified version of a concept they know or are passionate about so that even a 5 year old can understand it. You can add restrictions to this one like only using 3 words or using emojis only. This is an awesome team building activity to improve communication skills within your team.

4. Employee Virtual Wellness Sessions

The employee wellness session consists of a series of activities aimed at health and wellness. The session usually starts with an icebreaker followed by a guide sharing their insights on the topic and giving some exercises.

For instance, a mindfulness session might begin with a 5-minute guided meditation session. As the actual session begins, the expert will explain the concept of mindfulness, its benefits, and how you can practice it. The expert will also share a handful of tactics, such as how to control the pre-meeting or interview jitters via belly breathing.

You can consider the following employee wellness topics:

• Practicing ‘deep work’
• Desk stretching for healthy posture
• Mental health
• Financial wellness
• Building new habits
• Yoga and other low to moderate intensity exercises

6. Bring Out Your Team’s Artistic Side Via a DIY Craft Challenge

In the DIY craft challenge, everyone on the team gets 30 minutes to build something using items available at home. You can set the ground rules such as build something using cutlery, draw/doodle a poem, sketchnote a TED Talk, etc.

Keep the challenge as simple as possible, considering some team members are not as naturally artsy. Perhaps you can provide some tutorial videos to help them get started.

You can also ‘Bob Rossify’ this activity by letting an artist teach a simple craft. You can send team members a Hoppier spending card to buy a list of items required for the session and let the artist guide the team through the session.

7. Host a Miniature Campfire

Okay, it’s not possible to host actual campfires in your home office, but that doesn't mean you can't still have fun. Miniature campfires allows you to do all the fun activities virtually, sans the actual campfire.

Instead, you can light up a candle, crank up the thermostat, get some classic s'mores, and indulge in live performances, ghost stories, and games.

8. Play Virtual Scattergories

Scattergories are a workout for the brain. They promote creative-thinking by compelling players to name objects within a set of categories, given an initial letter, within a time limit. Although the game is meant for groups of two-six people, you can create breakout rooms or play the game in teams of up to six people.

The moderator shares the interface of Scattergories through their screen, which the participants can refer to. After two minutes of starting the round, participants share their answers, and the moderator will assign the scores following the game rules.

9. Get Adventurous In Virtual Escape Rooms

Virtual escape rooms are perfect for improving team collaboration and camaraderie. In these games, the teams use their problem-solving skills to break out of a cabin, find a treasure chest, or reclaim their kingdom within the time limit. Before players start the game, the gamemaster provides the instructions.

Some of the most famous virtual escape rooms are inspired by Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes, Nancy Drew, and other pop-culture shows and novels.

10. Indulge In Virtual Tasting Experiences

Whether you work in a small team of five members or bigger teams of 100+, curated virtual tasting experiences are among the most engaging team building activities.

In these sessions, the attendees will try an assorted variety of wines, cheese, chocolate, etc., with tasting notes and suggested food combinations.

An expert explains how these products are made, the history behind them, what makes each product unique, and most importantly, how to taste them. The expert also guides participants develop a taste if they are a newbie.

These sessions usually run for about an hour, after which you can do a pub-style trivia session to end it on a fun note.

11. Create Accountability Groups

People stick to their habits if they work in groups. This is where team accountability is effective. Many times people set fitness goals but don't follow through. In such cases, forming an accountability group of people working on the same goal is helpful.

You can set monthly health and wellness goals and track them every day using a shared spreadsheet. The goals could be as simple as drinking eight glasses of water, walking 5000 steps, or more complex goals such as lifting weights 3x per week.

You can introduce rewards to make it more competitive. Since everyone has different fitness levels and has different goals, creating breakout groups can help like-minded people work together.

Bringing It All Together

Building a cohesive team takes a lot of work but it doesn’t have to be a drag. You can quickly boost engagement and productivity by introducing these virtual team building ideas.

You may have noticed that most activities we’ve included are flexible. For instance, you can use the improv session as an icebreaker and continue with the other ideas. You can choose the format that fits your team and your team members’ personalities.

Try out some of these activities in your next team building session, and let us know how it went!