Team building from home has the power to transform your virtual team members, making them feel more appreciated, engaged, connected, and satisfied with their jobs. When done right, remote team building efforts can be just as effective as its on-site counterpart, while also including a couple of additional benefits, such as the capacity to handle rapidly changing business environments. Aside from a fun virtual team meeting, we’ve compiled some tools, strategies, and tactics that you can use to successfully promote team building from home.
Customized Clothes
One way to build office rapport, even from a distance, is to send your employees things like shirts or coffee mugs that are customized with the company logo. You could also customize a team building shirt with the help of your team members. Base it on a chosen theme so everyone can express their creativity and have a little fun. Another option is to build work-from-home kits at BYOG. Have you heard of these kits before? They can contain common pieces of gear and telecommuting essentials to help your team maintain a high level of productivity and focus, even from home.
Virtual Icebreaker Activities
The primary objective of including icebreaker activities at work is to give members a chance to get to know one another and dismantle the walls that they might have around each other. By doing this, you’re instilling the spirit of teamwork among your employees. Ideally, as they start to feel more comfortable working together it should boost their collaboration process. You can consider icebreaker games during a virtual team meeting as a way to loosen everybody up to avoid awkwardness between team members.
Custom Gift Boxes
One nice thing to do for employees who work remotely is to send them custom gift boxes. You can check out BYOG products to create gift boxes that relate back to helping your employees work more effectively from home. Creating custom gifts is also a great way to boost team building because it rewards all the hard work your team does. When people feel appreciated, they tend to work harder.
Remember, it’s also important to make sure that these custom kits are aligned with your company\’s values, beliefs, and mission. A great example would be adding some tools and accessories to help your team members be successful in their job, and show that you care about them. This can be a great way to recognize your team’s contributions and motivate them to keep moving forward, despite these unprecedented times of Covid-19.
Related Content: Thoughtful, Practical and Inclusive: Branded Gifts Your Employees Will Love
Two Truths & One Lie
Playing this game can help alleviate professional awkwardness because it’s light and fun. This can also serve as a great way to get to know each other, especially personal facts that don’t come up in everyday conversation. The key here is to make sure all the truths and lies seem realistic, so no one can easily guess the right answer. The best part of this is it involves video conferencing, which means you can read each other\’s facial cues and body language as you play the game.
Social Media Contest
Another fun team building idea is to engage in a little contest. Team members can post photos on social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram) of themselves using or wearing gear from their customized kits. For instance, wearing a team shirt, or drinking coffee from a customized mug. Create a hashtag so you can track the entries. You get to decide the terms of the contest and announce a winner.
Bucket List Sharing
The objective of this game is to get everyone to share a couple of things from their bucket list. Some members of your team are sure to feel shy at first during the virtual team meeting, but this activity can be a great way to get new recruits to talk about themselves. It can also tell you more about what drives and motivates your team members.
Olympic Sports at Home
Did you know your team can play Olympic sports at home? Most of us aren’t getting enough movement in our lives now that we’ve spent the better part of a year at home during the pandemic. Why not create teams and design some customized sports attire from BYOG? What about indoor golf, or living room horse shoes? The options are endless when you’re creative.
Whether your team has been together for years or working remotely is a new development, advances in our technology can help you find ways to build strong professional relationships, ever from afar. These activities can have a knock-on effect for some of the biggest issues that remote workers face, including loneliness and self-isolation, or an unfavorable work-life balance.
Related Content: Which Athletic Performance Fabrics Should I Wear?
MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator)
This fun personality test can help your team members to better understand themselves (and each other) in order to improve team dynamics and harness their true potential. Another notable benefit of the MBTI in the workplace is that it brings about positive team communication and adds value to manager-employee interactions. The results of this can be seen in their leadership styles, problem-solving strategies, diagnosing organizational issues, teamwork, stress management, and more. Plus, it’s always just interesting to learn more about yourself.
Simulated Problems
Incorporating problem-solving exercises in your team building efforts helps to develop your team\’s ability to solve complex issues, work together, and make sound decisions. It also encourages everyone to listen and to think critically about the best course of action. Always follow up with a closing session to allow team members to reflect on the collaboration process, lessons learned, and what they can improve on to reap better results.
Trivia Games
With social distancing becoming the new norm, your remote team can indulge in trivia games, as a virtual team building activity. This is another opportunity to divide into smaller teams and represent your side by sporting some cool customized apparel on the virtual team meeting. You can either share ready-made questions, or create your own trivia questions. These trivia questions can revolve around various topics that are related to your industry. You can put your knowledge to the test and learn something from each other along the way.
BYOG for Your Employees
If you’re looking for ways to promote team building among your remote employees, look no further than BYOG. Browse our site, or contact us today to learn more about kit building for your company.