Love them or hate them, team-building exercises work! They are an essential ingredient to a well-bonded team. Giving your team a way to let their hair down while working together to solve problems creatively can help them learn and get to know each other in a fun way. It also gives you, as a leader, the opportunity to gauge team performance and team effectiveness in a fresh and relaxed way. It’s like one big casual team assessment.

But how do you do that when every one is bound to working remotely and virtually? 

You get creative.

Just because you can’t all meet together doesn’t mean you have to scrap team building altogether. In fact, you should make it a priority. You can still create an opportunity to connect, learn, bond, and bridge the emotional distance while assessing your team’s performance and effectiveness with some fun virtual activities. 

Here are a few to get you started.

 

1. Break the Ice

While everyone is getting more comfortable using virtual meeting platforms like Zoom and Google Meet, it can still feel awkward. Reserving the first 10 minutes of your meeting or call to play a few icebreaker games is a great way to energize your team and put them at ease. 

Try this: Rapid-fire random questions. Give each participant 30 seconds to answer a random question. Here’s a helpful list of icebreaker questions and a question generator to get you started. 

 

2. Play Team Games

Setting aside time to play a few games can break up a long workday or be a nice treat after a long week. You can adapt many long-time favourites like charades, Pictionary, and Scategories to a virtual setting. 

Try this: Skribbl.io is the online version of Pictionary. Each player gets 80 seconds to draw a word while the rest of the players guess what they’re drawing. Or try virtual bingo. You can print up free Bingo cards here.

 

3. Have a Scavenger Hunt 

Shake things up with some healthy competition by playing an online scavenger hunt. Create a list of easy, challenging, and weird stuff for your team to find around the house. It will get everyone moving and a sure way to get some laughs.

Try this: Go completely virtual by using a scavenger hunt app. Here’s a list of 14 different ones you can try. 

 

4. Virtual Escape Room

Give your team a chance to interact in a creative way that will encourage them to problem-solve together. A Virtual Escape room encourages collaboration, patience, and a lot of creative problem-solving. 

Try this: Bring the escape room experience to your team virtually with Remote Adventures.

 

5. Healthy Lifestyle Challenge

Keep your team healthy and sharpen your goal setting with a Healthy Lifestyle Challenge. Pick an activity or food habit to do daily for a month and reward those who follow through. Start easy and then slowly increase the difficulty of the challenge.

Try this: Track everyone’s progress with this free Healthy Habits Tracking chart.

 

6. Virtual Murder Mystery

Kick things up a notch and plan a Virtual Murder Mystery party. Encourage your team to have fun with their character with a costume and props. Set aside a special day to play and end the game with some socializing over snacks. 

Try this: Use the Murder Mystery Co to plan your interactive party. They do all the work, so you can just show up and play!

7. Guess The Baby

Do you know who the members of your team were before you all started working together? Probably not! Playing Who da Baby is an interesting way to get to know your team in a whole new light.

Try this: Get everyone to submit a baby picture of themselves between the ages of 2-3. Put the images in a shared google folder or dropbox and have everyone guess Who da Baby is. 

 

8. Virtual Team Trivia

Another way to boost healthy competition with your team is to play online trivia. Challenge everyone to think fast and intelligently answer as many questions as they can. 

Try this: Get fancy and organize a fully hosted Virtual Pub Trivia party for your team. Complete with a host and quality trivia questions, you will be free to enjoy. 

 

9. Online Fundraiser

Nothing brings a team together in a more meaningful way than joining together and supporting a worthy cause. Choose to support a charity or cause together that resonates with all of you, and everyone feels connected to.

Try this: If you’re stuck for ideas, here are 14 creative virtual fundraising ideas to consider. 

 

10. Team Assessments

Assign your team members one of our team-building assessments to complete and work through our free workbook to identify team strengths and differences. 

Team building is a necessary element to developing a well-connected, synergistic team that functions well together. Keep building your team with creative online solutions. 

Want to take your team building one step further? 

Request your free workbook for another great team-building exercise.