Virtual teams are our future, there is no alternative to this!
Virtual teams come with a whole set of benefits at a much-reduced cost, but sometimes there could be challenges in running them.
One of the biggest challenges is to promote team bonding. Since the team is dispersed and is not meet-ing physically, it is challenging to build a working relationship. This may lead to blow on their productiv-ity. So, it is essential to conduct some virtual team building activities regularly to improve their bond-ing.
Trust and accountability are 2 of the most important aspects of a team. This can be challenging even for a team that sits together. Virtual team need this more, and team building activities are the easiest way to get there.
The effective virtual team building activities
1. A sneak-peek into their homes
One activity that can help in building trust is peeking into everyone’s house. So this activity brings the opportunity for each team member to reveal their favorite corners of the house and any special pos-sessions they have.
If your team is scattered in different time zones, then perhaps you can ask everyone to record a video and share with the team.
This activity will help in revealing a part of their personality and will open the doors for everyone to know more about each other.
2. Rose and Thorn
This game is pretty simple. Every member of the team has to tell one experience of their life that was a pleasant experience (depicting rose), and another experience that was very challenging in life (depicting thorn). The rose and thorn experiences have to be non-work related.
It allows the team members to explore the liking and disliking of each other. It is a light, fun activity and helps the team to gel well with each other.
3. Click and Paste
This activity requires every team member to click a few pictures of their favorite things, which may in-clude pets, friends, pictures of their school or college, holiday trips, hobbies, etc. The team members can paste these pictures on Yammer or on any other social platform used by the organization for oth-ers to see.
On a video call, the members can explain the pictures to give an idea of what the picture is about.
4. Story building Exercise
It is an extremely creative activity which is a lot of fun. Make 4 or 5 imaginary characters and circulate it to all team members. Each team member has to make a funny story using these characters. Only three minutes of narration time is given to each member.
The winner is the person who makes the funniest story. This activity is a lot of fun and will invite many lighthearted moments when each team member shares their funny story.
5. The famous song game
Prepare a list of names of all team members. The list must contain two columns. The first column con-tains the names of all the team members, and leave the second column blank. Circulate this list to all the team members.
All the team members are supposed to pick a song that most suits the other team member’s name in the second column. The lead can then reveal their choices.
The only precaution that needs to be taken here is that the chosen song should not be offensive in any manner. To ensure this, the team leader can also make a list of some 30 or 40 songs to choose from.
6. Quizzes/ Riddles
You can choose to conduct some exciting online games for the team. Organize games/quizzes/riddles online. While playing the game, every team member is required to stay in front of the camera to ensure they are not using phones or laptops to answer the questions.
The wining team should be give a gift, to keep it exciting.
7. Color coding
Choose a specific color of the day and let the entire team wear the same color while connecting on a video chat. Let everyone also wear the official id card while connecting on a video chat/conference.
Such small things help to build the motto and team spirit as well.
Apart from bonding, these activities can bring up the happiness index of the employees and help them to engage better at work. These activities also enhance job satisfaction and bring the comfort of work-ing together as teams.
