Remote Team Building: How to Organise it Successfully

Remote Team Building in Today’s Environment

Organising a successful interactive remote team building that will keep the entire team engaged is difficult enough. If you add the remote work environment and physical distance on top of that, you have a challenge ahead of you! 

Did you know that over 70% of employees across various industries prefer remote work? Since remote work is here to stay, HR and managers will have to adapt and find new ways to bond team members virtually. That task isn’t easy because most conventional team-building games require people to be in the same space.

Even then, not everyone is willing to participate in these events as they consider them trivial and boring. It’d be up to you as an organiser to make these activities as interesting as possible. So, the question remains: How to organise successful and interactive team building even if your employees work remotely?

What is Remote Team Building?

As per the name, remote team building is a virtual activity or set of activities that brings members of one team together. Hence the remote work environment, these events are held online so every member can participate. Sadly, the type and number of activities are limited to the online world, but that doesn’t mean that the team still can’t have fun!

Activities can vary from very short to long. It all depends on what your team likes. Sometimes introducing something new can be beneficial for your employees, so always try to think of new team-building activities you can do together. 

Why is Online Remote Team Building Vital for Your Team?

You don’t have to be a scientist to know that human contact and connection are vital for a business. Even though the members of your organisation have their tasks they’re working on, staying in touch helps them reach goals and conquer obstacles. Since they are physically far away, they can become emotionally distanced as well. That’s one of many reasons why HRs and managers insist on team buildings.

What are the Other Reasons Why Team Buildings are Beneficial for Your Team?

• First of all, team building improves overall in-house communication. Teammates need to learn how to communicate with one another. On top of that, they need to interact with other teams and departments, so having their communication skills improved certainly helps. 
• Remote and international teams are the biggest obstacle to unified company culture. However, building organisational culture on a healthy basis breaks down all sorts of barriers, including culture. Team buildings help your team place themselves in other person’s shoes and minimise prejudice. 
• Conflict is a natural occurrence in every environment. People are allowed to have different opinions. However, we must make a distinction between healthy and unhealthy conflict. Team building and empathy encourage conflict resolution within the teams and teach people how to react to different types of conflict.
• Team building also boosts the creativity and imagination of your team. Many workplaces require the use of creativity and imagination. But not everyone can be creative at all times. Team building activities help your team free their inner imagination and have their creative juices flowing again.

All of that affects the way your team performs. All in all, team building teaches your employees how to become and remain a team, how to utilise and develop teamwork skills and take their communication to a higher level. These activities are not only vital for a team but for your employees as humans!

What is the Best Way to Build a Remote Team?

As a manager, you know that gathering people around the same goal or task isn’t enough to make them a team! Without a solid structure, you don’t have a team, you have a couple of individuals working remotely on the same project. It’s up to you to decide what type of teamwork is the most suitable for your team according to the business you run. Will it be a large team with you on top, or do you prefer a hierarchical structure with more teams, leaders, and line managers? 

Building and managing a remote team also depends on your recruiting and hiring abilities. Keep in mind that choosing team members for remote work differs from a traditional environment. Even though expertise in the field matter, one of the main things you need to seek is communication ability. Communication skills and fast response time are crucial in the autonomous space such as remote work.

Last, but not least, you need to establish clear goals, guidelines, and boundaries for your team. These rules should apply to every member. Set a goal for the team, but don’t forget about individual contributions as well. Build your team on honesty and healthy grounds from the start. That way you’ll have a solid base or foundation you can build your team on! 

Everything You Need to Know About Remote Team Building Organisation

Organising team building is a chore. It takes a lot of effort, planning, and actual work to make it successful. A well-organised team building can bring harmony to your team and develop team dynamics. On the other hand, poorly organised team building is not only a waste of time and resources but can worsen the team dynamics and overall relations.

How can you organise team building and make it successful?

1. Assess the Need

A lot of managers insist on organising team buildings twice per year just because they read online that it is beneficial for their employees. Such events are usually organised without a certain goal in mind. Even though employees need to relax and have fun, team buildings are used to achieve certain goals, such as improved communication or conflict resolution.

Due to that, assessing the need is an important step to successful team building. What kind of problem do you notice? Is there an underlying cause to it? Try to talk to your employees. If they are dissatisfied with their physical conditions, no amount of internet fun can change that! 

2. Plan the Event

Every event needs to have a comprehensive and detailed plan. The department that can help you plan and conduct everything in HR. They have a couple of tricks up their sleeves that will help you plan, prepare and organise the sole event. So, what should be included in the plan?

Set the date! When planning a team building, employees need to know what date it is in advance. Since this is a virtual team building, choose a platform you’ll use for it. It can be something used for daily communication, just for the sake of familiarity. On top of that, you can plan the expenses because the price of online team-building games can vary from free to expensive. 

3. Set Goals and Expectations

A lot of employees have never participated in such an event before. This can increase their anxiety and stress levels as they don’t know what to expect. Therefore, writing an in-detail guide with a goal in mind is one of the essential steps in the organisation. That way, teammates will know how to act, what to expect and what the result will be. But how can you set an adequate goal?

Once you’ve assessed the needs, you can set an adequate goal. Have your employees worked extremely hard? Organise virtual team building with the purpose of light-hearted fun. If you plan on fostering teamwork, create team games with the interactive competition. Please keep in mind that members of one team competing against one another can be counterproductive! 

4. Engage Employees

Online team buildings and team events, in general, don’t only depend on the organisers, but on the employees as well. Each employee that participates in the activity needs to be held accountable for their presence. They need to ensure they understand the goal and that their internet is stable. In addition to that, preparation also includes downloading a necessary app for the event.

Besides that, it’s up to managers and organisers to keep employees posted about the date, activities, and timeline of the team building. Use internal marketing and branding to engage employees. Post exciting announcements and countdowns on your internal platforms to remind teams about an upcoming event. 

5. Follow-up

Conducting a follow-up after every team-building event is crucial. Whether you’ve organised a team building for a single department or the entire organisation. You need to learn how it went from their perspective and what could be improved next time. 

So, create an online survey form that will help you gather the necessary data and information. Send the form to the participants, or their team leaders if you’re worried that they won’t take it seriously. In the end, analyze the data and use that information to improve your team-building organisation. 

Interesting Remote Team-Building Activities for You and Your Team

Now, that we’ve covered all the facts you need to know about remote work, teams, and virtual team buildings, you’re ready to learn about online interactive and interesting activities your team can do. Virtual team activities can be divided into several categories all serving the main purpose of bringing the team together. So, how should you begin? 

Ice Breakers and Team-Building Games

The main purpose of ice breakers is to relax your team and help them to get to know each other better. These activities are usually short and free, which allows your team to rewind after a strenuous day. On the other hand, team-building games last a bit longer and have the purpose of increasing creativity, teamwork, or improving communication.

1. 50 Questions

Is there a better way to get to know your teammates than by asking questions? This ice breaker game will spark creativity and deepen the relationships within a team. Get a list of interesting questions online, or ask teammates to come up with the questions a game host would randomly pick. It is ideal for teams that have just been formed as well as the teams that have been together for a long time. You might be surprised to learn something new about your team. 

2. Two Truths and a Lie

Check your teammates’ poker faces by asking them each to think of the two truths and a lie. Make it difficult by telling believable lies or unbelievable truths. This bonding experience can reveal some fascinating things about your colleagues. 

3. Snapshot Your Day

This icebreaker doesn’t require you to be present on camera. You can have a snapshot task each day to encourage teammates to share the bits of their life outside work. For instance, some of the themes can include pets, books, messy desks, nature, or anything else relevant to your work environment. Pictures can spark a discussion and inspire people to get to know each other.

4. Name the Title Using Emojis 

Ask a game host to think of as many movies, songs, celebrities, brands, and generally well-known things and assemble their names out of emojis. Create a competition between teams and announce the winner. The winner is the team that gets the most titles correct.

5. Draw the Thing

For this game, it’s the host’s responsibility to put together a list of things, animals, actions, etc. On each player’s turn, they get a concept they need to draw in Paint or a similar program while sharing their screen. Other players guess the drawn thing. 

6. Virtual Escape Room

Unlike the popular horror movie, escape rooms are perfect team-building activities for smaller teams. Since you can’t do them in person, purchasing an online game with various themes can bring your coworkers together. They’ll have a unified mission to do puzzles, find clues and solve a mystery!

Check out more virtual team-building activities and games. 

What are Other Ways of Developing Teamwork While Working Remotely?

Even though team-building activities are beneficial and a fantastic way of developing teamwork in both remote and traditional environments, you can’t organise them all the time. Yet, you still need to keep your teams working together and achieving great results. 

1. Implement a team management tool that can help you measure productive hours and assign tasks to your teammates. These types of tools can help you track hours if necessary and calculate the performance of your team at the end of the day.
2. Avoid micromanagement by setting clear goals. Trust is essential in remote work, so set goals for your employees they need to perform on a weekly or monthly basis to keep track. 
3. Encourage collaboration for your team. Some of the best companies all over the world encourage collaboration via various file and information sharing tools. Follow their techniques of internal communication examples to achieve great results and incredible outcomes. 
4. Nurture transparency in your environment. While making mistakes is natural, hiding them can only damage the team and the reputation of the individuals. Lead by example and be the first one to admit your mistakes to your team. That way employees will know they won’t get in trouble for the erring, which allows you to work on an issue as a team.
5. Having regular check-ins with your remote teams also improves teamwork. This is an ideal time to share news, ideas, and potential issues to overcome them as a group. On top of that, such meetings can be great for bonding the team. 

At the first glance, virtual team-building activities seem difficult to organise and conduct. However, if you follow the steps given in this article, you’ll find that it’s a challenge worth taking. Team buildings provide the entire company with many benefits, so consider organising one for your team today. 

Action: For even more useful content on team building, check out our ultimate guide on Team Building Skills.