Virtual team building activities gained popularity overnight during the first lockdown. The number of remote teams has multiplied almost exponentially over the last couple of years—mainly due to the easy accessibility of virtual office concepts and virtual business addresses. As a result, new virtual team-building activities had to be created to keep teams connected. However, online team building is a totally different ball game than team building in person. The goal is still the same, to increase employee participation and grow the company culture.
These activities can be carried out over Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and Zoom, among other video conferencing platforms. Some simple examples of these activities are group fitness classes, icebreaker questions, and virtual campfires! This particular list includes:
- Conference call online team building activities
- Fast virtual team building games
- Virtual team building ideas that are free
- Fun work virtual team games
Let’s dive into the list!
Virtual Team Building Activities
This list includes Bingo, International Monster Hunter and other great virtual activities for some virtual fun with your work colleagues!
Online Office Games
Online Office Games is a kind of Olympics for the Office, it has spirited challenges, virtual team activities and games. Some examples of what it includes are Go Get It scavenger hunts, fast-paced trivia, and a game called “Can You Hear Me Now?”, which focuses on sharpening communication between people.
Online Office games is competitive, energetic, and has everything that you need to increase team engagement while working from home. It is sure to create a fun environment for everyone involved!
Tiny campfire
Tiny campfire is one of the best-known team building activities that you can do online. This is actually referred to as a “semi-virtual” event, as some of the materials that are used are actually physically present with each team member. A specific kit has to be sent or given out to every taking part before it can be organised, this kit includes mini marshmallows, graham crackers, a small tealight candle, and some Hershey's chocolate!
Once everyone has the materials, the “camp day” is organised and members must log on to their specific video conferencing platforms that you are using, and 90 minutes of trivia, ghost stories, and camp games will commence! It always works best if the event is run by one senior person to make sure everything goes smoothly.
Virtual Team Building Bingo
Bingo is always fun, so having a virtual team building Bingo event has to be a good time! It is a fun game for conference calls, as everyone is familiar with the game, and it can be played by both kids and adults.
In order to play cards must be distributed out to the players, and breakout rooms can be used to encourage people to work in small groups. Once someone successfully completes a row or an “X”, awards can be given out.
Virtual Team Building Icebreakers
Another simple idea to get your team building chemistry virtually is to have a quick round of ice break questions at the start of any conference calls. A rough guide is to allow for around 30 seconds per team member. Some questions you can use are as follows:
- What did you eat for breakfast?
- Are you a night owl or morning person?
- Coffee or tea?
- Where did you grow up?
- Cats or dogs?
- Avocado or bacon?
- Where do you consider home?
- What web browser do you use?
- Would you rather work from the beach or a mountain cabin?
- What do you like most about remote work?
- Do you prefer to start early or work late?
The host should be announcing who is to answer the questions next, as it is hard for people to read visual cues when video conferencing.
50 States Challenge
This is an interesting and sometimes funny game that can be played if you work with Americans. It is a challenge for those who have even lived in America their whole lives to name out the entire 50 states on the spot. There are templates that can be used to play if you want to give the participants the help of a map.
The Lightning Scavenger Hunt Activities
These “lightning” scavenger hunts are created to be fast-paced and fun virtual team building activities. To carry out this with your colleagues, you must invite everyone to a video call, and start giving out cues like “show a dictionary”, “get your favourite mug”, or our personal favourite “Cuddle your pet!”.
Whoever is the fastest to carry out the instructions gets a point.
Tree or Bob Ross
Both of these games are quite similar in principle to Eye Spy or 20 Questions, and other similar team building activities. To begin, one of the players must choose an identity, which can be either a concept or an object. Your imagination is the biggest weapon in this game and try to choose the most difficult identity possible to make it interesting.
The player that has the identity is called The Post, and the other participants must ask The Post as many questions as possible to uncover their identity. The first question must be “is it more like a tree, or more like Bob Ross?”, and The Post has to answer by selecting one or the other. The following questions then must bring a new word into the mix, for example if a tree was selected in the first question, the second question could be “is it more like a tree, or more like a flower?”. This method must be repeated until the answer is found!
Blackout Truth or Dare
Pretty much everyone is familiar with Truth or Dare is some form, this is the virtual team building activity version of the simple game.
To play, the players must have their cameras on, and the host will state either a truth or a dare like “show us the room that you are in” or “how old is your partner?”. Players can turn their cameras off to opt out of playing, and then the host has to command one of the remaining players to complete the dare or tell the truth.
The player who completes the round leads the next round of truth or dare, so there is an incentive to stay in the game!
Pancakes vs Waffles
This is a fun game that can be played either in person or virtually. It is based around group decision making and friendly debate, and therefore can be a great option for virtual team building.
To play, the debate is announced; your team has to make a choice to get rid of either pancakes or waffles from their life forever, and everyone must be in agreement. Whichever option the team selects, survives into the next round, and a new contender must be announced. So for instance if pancakes won the first round, the next round could be pancakes vs french toast. The fun part of this is that it does not have to stick to food, and some interesting questions can arise! We’ll let your imagination take care of the rest!
This is a great option for team building as it includes everyone, even the introvert on the team, as everyone has an opinion that they do not mind sharing over such a trivial debate like pancakes vs waffles.
Virtual Werewolf
This is a brilliant option for virtual team building over conference calls, as it is based around careful listening, speaking, and voting as you try to survive.
To play, participants draw for the various roles of werewolf, medic, seer, or villager. Werewolves eat people, medics can save players, seers can look deep into another player’s soul to reveal their “wolf-status”, and villagers vote werewolves off of the island. To start, the host states that as night has fallen, everyone must close their eyes. Werewolves are asked to wake up and select a victim, the medic will then select one player that they can save, and the seer points to one person that they want to reveal. Once this is finished, the host states that the sun is rising and everyone can open their eyes. They will also let everyone know if a villager was eaten during the night.
Anyone that has been eaten now becomes a ghost, and is not able to speak for the rest of the game. The remaining survivors must debate and vote one person off of the island, trying to get rid of the werewolves. This is repeated until only villagers or werewolves are left.
Something in Common
This is a very quick game that can be played for virtual team building. Split everyone up into small groups and each group must identify three of the most unique things that they all have in common. This can be made more challenging by removing some common categories like books, food, and movies.
So, what do you think of this list of virtual team building activities? Will you be using some of these on your next conference call? Clinked would love to hear how you use these team building activities in the comments below!