From our end, here are a list of things that you can do with your teams to keep them engaged and keep the spirits high.
1. Strike!
⏰: 15 - 20 mins
Focus: Fun and Interaction
Team Building Bingo is a fun game you can play to engage all your teammates. You start with a bingo board that has numbers, action items or accomplishments on it. Bingo is a classic game that most people are familiar with, and this version is a quick, easy way to get started with virtual team building. The game carries on as any other bingo game does. the rules can be customized for added fun!
You can also look for some free templates on pinterest or www.myfreebingocards.com.
2. Speed Typing
⏰: 15 - 20 mins
Focus: Fun and Competition
Typing speed races are free virtual team building activities that you can start right now. To begin, take a typing test. Then, post your results on your company message board or by email. You can then up the challenge by hosting a typing speed relay, which is when you form squads and add up the cumulative scores to see which team wins.
Typing speed races are ostensibly a fun little challenge to get everyone playing online team building games together. It is also great skill building as typing speed is incredibly important.
You can look up some popular websites like www.typingtest.com
3. Bingeing with boss
⏰: 15 - 20 mins
Focus: Fun and Interaction
In these difficult times people are cooking and eating at home more often. This love for cooking and eating is generally popular worldwide. Invite your team members to participate in a recipe roundup, which could have themes like "recipes with only 3 ingredients" or "Five-minute food" etc. While these team activities are mostly meant to be fun, there is also a strong element of communication involved.
4. EXAGGERATE!
⏰: 15 - 20 mins
Focus: Fun and Interaction
This is a quick and easy storytelling game that you can use. Each team member grabs a random object in arms length and creates a story about it, or can choose to describe a generic object. The goal is to exaggerate the truth about what makes that object amazing.
For example, if someone picked up an alarm clock, they could say “this is a relic from the past that was used by lord Ram, an artifact that has been passed through generations as a secret ”. This activity is exactly what exaggeration is. Not necessarily essential, but pretty dramatic and exciting.
5. Spreadsheet Pixel Art
⏰: 30 mins
Focus: Fun and Interaction
Facilitation: Required
While most teams are very familiar with Google Sheets, relatively few think of them as remote employee engagement activities. If you are both a professional and an artist at heart, then you will enjoy this activity.
Essentially, Spreadsheet Pixel Art is when you add a little code to Sheets that will automatically replace numbers with a color fill for that cell. You can then use these colored cells to “paint the numbers” and create pictures of animals, landscapes and more. For virtual team building activities, you can do a short-term competition or work on the same sheet.
6. Debate
⏰: 15 mins
Focus: Competition and Interaction
Friendly debates are always fun to have. You can give the team members a topic and split them into two clusters - one speaking for the topic and one against it. The topic can be anything ranging from current affairs to something work-related.
Each cluster can be given a separate virtual room to discuss the plots and ideas for a certain duration and then later a debate can be held on a common platform.
7. I Have A Dream
⏰: 15 - 20 mins
Focus: Fun and Interaction
A bucket list is something that is very personal, something that is close to ones heart. A bucket list helps understand people better, get to know their thoughts and personalities. Sharing your bucket list with your colleagues will help in understanding each other at a deeper lever. In times like these, all we need is people who are there with us and understand us.
8. Upcycling
⏰: 15 - 20 mins
Focus: Fun and Creation
Everyone has a pile of things that is just kept aside for future use, and that future is now. Take all that stuff and get recycling. Bring out your creativity and make the best out of waste. You can also have a small competition among your employees.
9. Great Minds Think Alike
⏰: 15 - 20 mins
Focus: Interaction and Creation
In this activity one team member draws a picture using only basic shapes. A selected team member then describes the picture that was drawn to everyone else. Without seeing the picture, each person must attempt to reproduce the picture based only on what the selected team member is saying to them! The ultimate goal is that everyone is able to create the same picture as the original.
Although some pictures will be more similar than others. This Activity emphasizes how important verbal communication is while working with others, and also how communication can be interpreted differently by different people.
There can be 2 rounds for the activity - the first round in which only the person who is drawing is allowed to speak and the second round in which all team members can ask questions to the person who is drawing.
10. Nostalgia
⏰: 15 - 20 mins
Focus: Fun and Interaction
Tea time stories are an essential part of our culture. Everyone has their favorite story or a moral that they learnt from these stories. They can be ranging from stories that you read in books or personally heard from your grandparents. Sharing these stories with your colleagues adds a personal touch brings back some nostalgia.
Who doesn't love a good story that takes them back in time and gives them a much needed break from the current situation
11. Sharp Minds
⏰: 15 - 20 mins
Focus: Fun and Interaction
Books are a man's best friend. Sometimes you read a book and it fills you with this weird zeal, and you have this strange feeling like everyone you know should read the book that you are reading. Teams can have virtual book reading/book suggesting sessions that not only help in understanding their teammates better but also bring out vast choices of books that they can read and gain wisdom and knowledge.
12. Inspire Me
⏰: 30 mins
Focus: Fun and Interaction
With WFH being the need of the hour, is no doubt that motivation is required. Each day one person can be given a task to find out an interesting TED talk that can be helpful for the team in terms of work or generally. This will not only make things interesting, it will also bring in the aspect of learning new things.
13. Social Shakespeare
⏰: 15 - 20 mins
Focus: Fun and Interaction
Each member of the team can be given the task to write a poetry about the co-workers and present it the next day. Each member gets a new name everyday and in random order. This will not only bring the team members closer but also bring out creative poetry skills
14. Work Out Mates
⏰: 15 - 20 mins
Focus: Fitness and Interaction
We always have an excuse for not having the time for physical fitness. Now that our travel time has reduced. we have all the time to work on those abs that we always wanted. have your teams take some time off from the stressful work and have a fitness jam together. From yoga, zumba to cardio - the possibilities are endless.
15. Qualcosa Di Nuovo
⏰: 15 - 20 mins
Focus: Interaction and Learning
In a diverse nation like India, it is almost impossible to know each and every language. A team member can be assigned a task to teach words of their mother tongue or a commonly picked language that majority of the team members want to learn. This will not only help with the cultural gap but also will bring in the advantage of learning a new language.