Team Building Games – Virtual team building activities

Virtual team building activities

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If you’re working from home, can you still build your company culture from miles away? Of course you can, although not as easy as before. Non-verbal cues are basically inexistent and technical difficulties might happen too often. But it’s even more imperative under these conditions to proactively engage your team as an antidote to the inherent loneliness of remote work – which unaddressed, can cause a drop in motivation and overall productivity.

Just like regular team building, virtual team building aims at creating a safe environment where remote workers can be themselves and blow some steam off, while coming together as a team. Only this time, everybody is seated at their individual desks… or kitchen tables.

It’s important because teams who trust their colleagues, both in character and capability, are more willing to step out of their comfort zones and pursue a common goal. And effective, if practiced on a regular basis. You can’t slap a one-time spontaneous event, then expect all to follow suit and be charged up again.

Assuming that both you and your team have a stable Internet connection and use online collaboration software like Zoom, Skype, Microsoft Team, or Paymo, Slack, Bitrix24 … here are 15 team building activities and games that will bring the team spirit back.

Activity details

Meeting online implies a bit of idle time. There might be some technical difficulties or someone didn’t arrive yet. Until you fix them, use ice breakers as a way to warm up your team and set the stage for more complex activities.

1. Opening questions

You’ll need: a video conferencing tool
Time: 5 minutes

We’re starting with the most obvious one on purpose. Not because it’s a no brainer, but because how you start a meeting sets the tone for how it will further unfold. So allow your team to make small talk here and there, as this loosens up the atmosphere and helps them catch up on each other’s lives – something that is given in an office, but not in a remote environment.
Keep it casual and do it right after you enter the video conference. Or, lay out a few organized questions as reference points in a collaboration tool. Here are our favorites:

What was the last dish you cooked?
What new cool TV series/animes/films have you discovered over the weekend?
Have you been on a trip lately? If yes, where and how was it?

2. Online riddle

You’ll need: Slack, Paymo
Time: 10-15 minutes

Not all those who attend meetings are fully energized. Some might have just woken up, some are struggling with their kids, while others are still thinking about the tasks ahead of them.

Bring everyone’s focus in the moment with riddles. Find them on your own or go to Riddles.com for inspiration (they come with answers too). When you’ve found one, login to a work management platform like Paymo and start a discussion with your team to see who can crack it first. This simple exercise kicks our brain gears, making sure we’re giving our undivided attention to what’s next.

3. Word association

You’ll need: a video conferencing tool
Time: 10-15 minutes

This is another great activity to help your team focus before a meeting, only more inclusive and straightforward. Just ask your colleagues to summarize the meeting topic in a one word – nothing less, nothing more.

For example, you might be holding a meeting about your company’s positioning, so you ask your team to pick one word that best describes it. They could answer with “strong”, “inconsistent”, “work-in-progress”. No matter the answer, this exercise allows you to discover their view points and assumptions that led to these summaries in the first place. Ultimately, you want to clarify issues or goals together, before diving into the meeting agenda.

Now that you’ve warmed up, it’s time to actually practice a few activities to bond together and improve team cohesion. You’ll know that you’re successful when you feel a greater connection with your colleagues, even though they’re miles away.

1. Personality test (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator)

You’ll need: a video conferencing tool
Time: 30 minutes

How well do you know your colleagues, professionally? I’m not talking about their LinkedIn activity or latest credentials, but about their preferred way to communicate, handle conflict, and contribute to the overall team.

Find out by taking the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality test. The original one capitalizes on Carl Jung’s theory that our behavior is influenced by four psychological functions: sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking. These are further translated into four categories that combined together, result into 16 personality types.

Take the survey at 16personalities.com (we found this to be the most user friendly one) to get an accurate profile of your personality type. Not only will you find out where your strengths and weaknesses lie, but also which characteristics make you compatible with other types and how to efficiently deal with them. If you want to throw in some fun, google your type followed by “famous people”. I’m ENTP, the same as Celine Dion, although I suck at singing

2. Office trivia

You’ll need: a video conferencing tool
Time: 30 minutes

Competition in the right context can be stimulating. Especially when it’s about reinforcing your company values and making sure everyone practices them, even at home.

For this, play the virtual, more dynamic version of the traditional office trivia. Prepare between 20-25 more and less serious questions about your company, like “When was it established?”, “Who are your ideal customers?” or “How many people called Andrew are there in total?”. You get it. Only this time, you’re also giving hints in the form of a first letter, multiple choice, or numbers to create confusion.

Here’s the fun part. Group all the participants into teams of 3, with a representative who will use a “buzz” like sound to alert you when they have the answer. The buzz sound has to be chosen at the beginning and can’t be further changed. Note that some – like a chicken squeak – can steal some laughs from the others and buy you more time. The team with the most correct answers wins. Entertainment is guaranteed while you’re doing an enjoyable value check!

3. Pancakes vs. Waffles

You’ll need: a video conferencing tool
Time: 40-45 minutes

Like a speed car going from 0 to 100km in just a few seconds, Pancakes vs. Waffles is a collective game that has low stakes, gradually growing in importance the longer you play it.

Here’s how it works. As a team, you have to decide whether you want to keep pancakes or waffles, eliminating the loser word once and for all. Each team member can support their choice with arguments, but in the end, the majority has to rule over one word to go on with. Next, add a new contender. Say Pancakes vs. Snickers, Snickers vs. Salads, Salads vs. Festivals, Festivals vs. Ski resorts. You get the point.

As you notice, the stakes grow higher with every round. Here’s where it gets interesting though. What if you add a feature of your product and compare it to a similar one of your competitors, say Time tracking vs. Random screenshots? Or two competitors facing each other? This helps understand how your team perceives your unique attributes against similar solutions and whether you need to change your strategy to own a better space in your customer’s minds.

TIP: Since we’re talking about virtual games in a remote environment (and we did touch upon time tracking before), web based employee time tracking software can help you with scheduling these activities and not only.

You can’t always keep a straight face while at work, even if you’re doing it from home. Otherwise you risk bringing yourself on the verge of burnout. Get a little bit childish on purpose and blow some steam off with the following just for fun activities.

1. Meme contest

You’ll need: Paymo board
Time: 15-30 minutes

If you enjoy shooting paper balls with your colleagues at an improvised hoop (usually the office dust bin), you’ll love this meme contest. The virtual game consists of 4 rounds, each one with its own topic, to see who can find the best memes over the Internet.

All you need to do is log into Paymo and create a workflow with 5 columns for each round, including a warm-up one. Then switch to the Board view and have each colleague add their own memes to a card, along with their name. Once done, upvote who has the funniest meme by reacting with a thumbs-up emoji. The person who wins the most rounds becomes the Troll King Of The Internet…at least inside your team!

2. Take a pic of your desk

You’ll need: Slack
Time: 5 minutes

Inside an office, you’re forced to keep your desk clean. At least out of common sense and respect for the others. This means no scrambled post-its, overlapping coffee rings, or pizza leftovers from last weekend’s DOTA.

At home though, you can be as laid-back as you want to. Work next to your cat, have a few Christmas lights hanging to remind you of holidays, or let the dishes pile up until somebody picks them. To keep things fun, take a pic of your workstation and share it on Slack. Then brag about the chaos almost swallowing you or your unique setup. In return, this will spark some serious laughs and legit reactions questioning your interior design skills (and sanity too)

It’s pretty obvious there are a lot of benefits of team building activities, and these are just a few of the virtual team building activities that you might want to try out. Use them to set the stage before an important activity, bond better with the rest of the team, or just have some fun for the sake of it.
The bottom line is to keep your team aligned during these uncertain times and help each other out, both at a personal and professional level.
Indochina Mice is one of the leading companies organizing MICE, Team building and Holidays in Vietnam with high benefits and cost-effective for the customers, providing diverse programs, multiple solutions and different venues for your choice of team building activities. We are committed to offering superior services making us the ideal choice for a team building trip and event destination in Vietnam, even it is virtual.