When managing a remote team, it’s essential to continue to prioritize virtual employee engagement. But how do you promote employee bonding when managing a remote team? With a remote working environment, virtual team engagement activities foster bonding experiences with your remote employees. It’s the perfect time to get creative and organize virtual company events and activities.
Before the pandemic, only 6% of workers were remote. It’s expected that 25% of workers will be remote by the end of 2023. These statistics show a massive shift in the way our workforce operates, with more companies continuing to offer remote work than ever before.
As we see an increase in remote teams, this drives home the importance of virtual events for work along with virtual team engagement. Develop company culture virtually with fun activities with your remote teams for company events. There are plenty of fun virtual employee bonding activities that can help bring your team closer together.
First, let’s get into the specifics of virtual employee bonding and then go over some virtual employee engagement ideas you can start planning for your remote team.
What is Virtual Employee Bonding?
Virtual employee bonding creates valuable connections between your remote team members—even if they’re physically across the country! Strengthen communication and increase productivity with a more engaged remote team. Feelings of loneliness could impact your remote team when they feel as though they don’t know their team on a more personal level. Scheduling virtual company events helps promote a positive company culture, even if no one is working in person together. Get rid of any possibilities that your remote team feels isolated with virtual events for work.
Virtual Employee Engagement Ideas
When it comes to different virtual employee engagement activities, the main component to connect with your remote teams is through video. Live video calls allow your remote team to see one another face-to-face without being in person. Being able to see and hear your employees creates that sense of familiarity and helps the bonding experience.
Utilize these virtual employee engagement ideas to boost employee bonding with your remote teams:
Coffee Break
A virtual coffee break can be a fun bonding experience to take a moment from work and de-stress a bit with coworkers. A nice gesture would be to pick a day when you send a virtual gift card to your remote team to buy a coffee. Then once everyone has their drinks, they can hop on a video call to chat with colleagues and catch up with each other.
Book Club
Choose a book that everyone on the remote team will read to promote employee bonding. You can set up a suggestion box and poll your team so they can vote on a book they want. Then after everyone reads the book, set up a video call where everyone can discuss the book and what they liked (or didn’t like) about it. Try to go with books that are light-hearted subjects and not work related!
Scavenger Hunt
Scavenger hunts are a popular virtual employee engagement activity that gets your team up and moving. Choose someone to keep score on your team for the game. Create a list of household items and start the hunt by giving clues as to what your team needs to collect and show on the screen. For example, you can say show us something that’s green, and your team can show you anything from a shirt nearby, a houseplant to lettuce from their fridge. Get creative with the clues and have fun with it!
Trivia Game
Who doesn’t love a game of trivia? Put on virtual company events like trivia matches to test your remote team’s knowledge. Choose different categories and pull up questions online that you can ask your virtual team. Keep track of who gets the most answers correct (without using Google!) You can even form teams among your remote employees for extra employee bonding. Maybe even include a small prize like a virtual gift card for the winning team!
Wellness Session
Schedule virtual company events that are not only great for employee bonding but their overall health and wellness. Meditation sessions can start with easy 5 minute team building activities where everyone gets on a video call to participate together. Virtual guided meditation, desk stretching techniques, or beginner yoga sessions can help your remote employees relax and feel centered.
Cooking Challenge
Time to get your remote employees in their kitchens with an employee bonding activity that keeps everyone engaged. Have your team submit recipe ideas and vote on their favorite. Then choose a day where you do a challenge for lunch by giving your chefs a limited amount of time to cook up their masterpieces. Have them present their dish to the team on a video call and taste test the final product.
Ice Breaker Questions
Another great option for quick 5 minute team building activities can be ice breaker questions. Come up with a list of questions to let your team get to know each other on a deeper level. You can even do these before regularly scheduled conference calls to set the tone and promote employee bonding.
Boost Virtual Team Engagement with Video
When you have a fully remote team, putting on virtual events for work through video is essential for employee bonding. Virtual teams can connect with fun activities for company events via video that creates a positive company culture. Having the ability to see your coworkers through video helps to feel more connected to your team. Plan fun virtual employee engagement activities and get the whole team involved.
At Reimagined Experiences, video is at the forefront of everything we do! We help boost employee engagement through video resources and have an expert team to coordinate all of the logistics. Contact us to learn more about how the use of video can help employee bonding at virtual company events.
