Boost Morale with These 5 Virtual Team Building Ideas

Let’s face it.

With this pandemic still ongoing, remote work will continue to be our reality for a while.

If your team is struggling with the continued isolation, you can make the virtual world better for your team with our compiled list of the top 5 virtual team building ideas to boost morale.

Try this list with your team and watch what happens!

Break the Ice

It’s easy to jump right into a virtual meeting when everyone knows each other. You keep the same routine, and you instantly start talking about what’s on today’s agenda.

Don’t be afraid to do something different.

Switch things up.

You know what will bring a little more excitement to your meetings?

Start every virtual meeting with an icebreaker.

This is a great team building activity that you can do right before every remote meeting.

Even though everyone knows each other, is it really such a bad idea to give people something fun to talk about before work?

You might find your team getting excited about what fun icebreaker you might ask at the next meeting.

Here’s the kicker: your icebreaker questions don’t have to be about work.

Honestly, we wouldn’t even recommend you ask work-related icebreakers because who wants to talk about work before working?

Have a Happy Hour

You can set a special Zoom meeting aside just for Happy Hour. It could be one hour just once a month that you set aside for you and your team to have a Happy Hour.

So, what will it be? A Netflix movie party? Simon Says? Charades? Maybe a few rounds of trivia on Kahoot?

The possibilities are endless of what you can do for a fun happy hour with your team. Get creative! Ask your team for ideas on activities they would enjoy doing virtually. You can even appoint a volunteer to lead one of the happy hours.

Some people feel that these have been overdone, but if you haven’t done them, your team may really enjoy them.

Group Chat

This may sound weird, but you should consider starting a group chat with your team and colleagues. However, your goal should be whatever leads to team building.

Maybe you could start a group chat that is specifically for work-related humor. If someone finds a funny quote or meme related to work, they can post it in the group chat.

If you have Slack, you could create a workday humor channel. Encourage people to share funny things they have found. It would be good to remind them it is still a work channel and to make sure things they post aren’t offensive.

You could highlight a few of the things that are found in your team meetings. It gives you all an opportunity to check on each other and to stay engaged with one another.

Virtual Lunch Meetings

Add a virtual lunch to your team meetings!

If you block one hour for a meeting, spend at least 15-30 minutes eating lunch with your team via Zoom. Everyone can bring their lunches and eat while on the Zoom call.

This will help give the feeling of having lunch with your colleagues again.

We will caution you a bit here as some people don’t like to eat on camera, but an increasing trend is people eating lunch in their cars in a parking lot, socially distanced with the windows down.

While it isn’t fully virtual, it could be a great way to connect in person, while still being safe.

Virtual Games

We can’t possibly list every single idea you can do for virtual games, but this will be a great team building activity.

Here are some ideas we came across for virtual games with your team via Zoom:

• Trivia
• Truth or Dare
• Scavenger Hunt (find this item in your house)
• Play a few rounds of “Who’s Most Likely To”
• Bingo
• Pictionary
• Play some of your favorite online games using this website: https://playingcards.io

Some families have a game night. There’s no reason why every now and then you can’t get together over Zoom with your team to have a game night or afternoon too!

No matter what you decide to do with your team, make sure you have fun! You need to get people excited about their job and give them something positive to look forward too.

Working remotely can become lonely for those who thrive on in person interaction. We know these team building activities can help boost your teams’ morale, help combat loneliness, and bring you all closer as you continue to work remotely.

If you’re planning on trying any of these team building ideas with your employees and colleagues, be sure to let us know how it goes!