Are you looking for ways to inject some fun and levity into your team meetings now that everyone is working remotely?
10 Ideas to Have Some Fun while Working from Home
1. Get to Know You Quiz
Time: 10-15 minutes or as long as you want it to.
Rules: Send polls and multiple-choice questions – anything with a quiz format to spark a conversation. You could do this on Zoom polling or if you have polling options internally or even a virtual whiteboard. Do the following exercises:
Ask each person to send a fact to the supervisor or team leader. The leader posts the question in chat or on the board and says, “Who is this?” Have everyone guess.
You could play a work appropriate version of Would You Rather? (Go to the Beach or Go to the Mountains)
Trivia
Ask everyone to share their first job, first concert, first car, what they are binge-watching, best childhood memory.
2. Photo of your life
Time: 15-30 minutes
Rules: Each group can share a picture of something of their life, anything that tells a story about the employee: their dog or cat, their favorite mug to drink coffee, their kids, or even the view from their apartment or house. Then ask the remote employee to share the story behind the picture they shared.
Objective: These remote team building games can act as an icebreaker when you play this for the first time, or a new hire joins the company. It is a fun, surprising way to get to know one another and creates a casual atmosphere.
With a twist: You can post your picture and ask others to write the headline.
Different twist: Use the video camera and ask people to show their at home work spaces. Or if they are willing (!) show us your home or one thing in their home that they would “Grab first if there was a fire.” Mine is a collage of my daughter’s school pictures from K-12! I love it so much.
3. Virtual games
Time: As long as you want to.
Rules: There are some popular games that are available online or can be adapted to be played virtually, such as:
Pictionary
Charades via video chat
Scrabble
Hangman
4. Words with Friends
Time: Ongoing game, at your own pace
Rules: Download the app and pair up employees to have matches against one another. Each player gets tiles with letters and they need to combine the letters to create words. The player with the most points is the winner. (It’s an online version of Scrabble!)
Objective: Words with Friends is all about allowing employees to collaborate with one another as they build words, even managers can join as just another player.
5. Three truths and a lie
Time: If time is an issue, you can do one person each meeting instead of every person in one meeting. Do it over the course of several weeks. It can be something to look forward to!
Rules: Host a video conference and ask each remote employee to tell three truths and one lie about themselves. Keep the lie realistic so it won’t be so easy for everyone to guess. The other employees need to guess which was the lie and whoever guesses right gains points.
Objective: It is a great way to get to know one another, especially things that aren’t common knowledge.
6. Bucket list challenge
Time: 10-15 minutes
Rules: Host an online/video conference and give all your employees five minutes to think about what would make their bucket list – what are some things they would love to do in their lifetime? (Or have them think about this ahead of time, come prepared).
Then have everyone go around and share their list. If you have employees who share the same activities, you can challenge them to work on it together! Like, running a marathon – if you have employees who live in the same city or have marathons at the same time in different cities or states, ask them to hold each other accountable to finish the marathon! They can push one another and can check in on each other’s progress.
Objective: Whenever you need a cool icebreaker, turn to the Bucket List Challenge as team building games for remote workers. It can be fun to hear what other people want to achieve, maybe some have ticked off an item and can share their experiences to the rest of the team.
With a Twist: Have someone email their bucket list item to the supervisor. They put it on chat or a whiteboard and ask everyone to guess who’s Bucket List item that is.
7. Aliens have landed!
Time: 30 minutes to one hour depending on how many people you have.
Rules: Split your employees into groups of three or four. Tell everyone that aliens have landed on Earth and are interested in learning about your company. But the aliens don’t speak English so you need to explain to them about the company with five symbols or pictures. The groups need to talk among themselves to come up with the five necessary images. One group member should upload the five images that best describe the company. As a manager, take a look at the images and see if you notice any common themes as this will show you if all your employees understand the company.
Objective: You need team building games for remote workers that will encourage communication, build out-of-the-box thinking, and creative thinking. The more your staff talks and create ideas, the more at ease they will feel about their colleagues so going forward, working together won’t seem so intimidating.
8. Create our commercial
Time: 20-30 minutes
Rules: Create teams of three or four and ask them to write the next commercial for the company. It must have a slogan, a jingle, and highlight a feature or benefit of the company’s products. Extra points for creativity. Ask everyone to share in a group meeting.
9. Virtual Scavenger Hunt (great if you could give prizes, think Let’s Make a Deal)
Time: as long as you want to go
Rules: One by one, list things for the participants to find in their homes and whoever brings it back first, gets a point:
A co-worker with a baseball card collection (or one baseball card)
A co-worker with a pet (this could be a breakout all its own)
A concert T-shirt
A photo with someone famous
A trinket from a vacation
A garden tool
A battery
You can make this odd ball stuff to make it fun. These are ideas.
10. Team pets org chart
Pets play an important role in many people’s lives. If your team has pets, have them share pictures and create funny office titles for them to put into an org chart. For example, a cat could be designated as “Director of Lap Warming” or a dog could be the official “Anti-Squirrel Defense Coordinator.”
Encourage your team to be creative and have fun with it. You could even start a pet employee of the month (or quarter) based on team nominations.
If they don’t have a pet, they can use a plant, or a stapler, or a lamp, just get creative!
We work 40-50 years in our lifetimes.
Make it fun & fulfilling.
Enjoy Your Team!
Some items were adapted from ConnectTeam.com