Many companies have left employees to work from home even after the end of self-isolation and do not plan to meet with the team face-to-face in the near future. At the same time, the tasks of forming a corporate culture, team building, and increasing the involvement of personnel have not gone away.
Therefore, they will have to be solved in the same way as other working issues, namely in an online format as a virtual meeting. The following activities will help to make them more effective.
Team-coffee, Joint Meditations, or Workshops
This is the easiest online team-building option that does not require large investments. In fact, this is time for meaningless conversations on non-work topics on Zoom, Skype, or on a corporate video conferencing platform over a cup of coffee.
Zoom Flash Mobs and Challenges
This is a slightly more complex version. Employees are not just going to chat on Zoom, but go through some kind of challenge together and share the results in a corporate application or chat, motivating each other.
Co-creation
Few things contribute to the unity of people like joint creativity. It is also possible to create on the livestream event, for example, to draw general digital paintings with a team or even stage an online performance.
Quizzes and Other Intellectual Duels
Team quizzes and various brainstorms are a great idea for a livestream meeting. This format requires a slightly more complex technical solution with the ability to break into groups and communicate in a private group chat, and then go into a general chat with an answer.
Quiz Dating
A separate subspecies of quizzes is acquaintance quizzes. Here the goal is not in an intellectual or creative competition, but in the recognition of each other by the participants.
An example of team building for employees in this genre is the Discovery game. The host takes participants in turns and asks questions, while the others try to guess how the hero will answer.
The quiz is aimed at ensuring that employees get to know each other not only from the working side, get inspired by each other, and build closer informal relationships.
Multiplayer Online Games
Multiplayer online games are a fun way for employees to collaborate and bond. There are many specialized games, such as an online escape room tailored for team-building. These escape rooms require your team to look for a way out by solving a series of riddles. The second option is simulation games.
VR and AR Games
A subspecies of multiplayer games that deserves special mentioning is games of virtual reality via open source video conferencing. In addition, it does not have to be an expensive solution.
An example of a budget team game with AR is the spaceteam.ca application. Participants become the team of a spaceship in distress. Their salvation depends on how quickly and synchronously they act. Moreover, acting often means shaking your smartphone or rotating it or something like that.
Business Games
Various business games, for example, the popular management fights are also well transferred online. Participants jointly solve real business cases and then vote for their favorite solutions with game currency. Such mechanics allows you to work out knowledge in the form of a game and often complements the training course.
Communication Games
Another genre of online team building is communication games. Here, participants are required to find the right people, negotiate, intrigue and spy. An example of team building in this genre is the Winter Is Coming game by Dr. Team. In the entourage of the popular series, participants must achieve goals through well-built communication with other players.
In the offline format, this game involved the active movement of players between the tables. Online movement occurs between chats. This format requires the presence of its own virtual platform with wide functionality for communication, and the ability to write private messages and communicate in private group chats.
Quests
You can play games and complete quests without special digital products. Voice quests allow you to get less emotional, especially if they are well prepared and conducted by a charismatic host with the involvement of professional actors in the supporting roles.
Online Quests
To conduct a high-quality online quest, a simple video call will no longer be enough. This requires a dedicated event platform or application where attendees receive tasks and share solutions.
Online quests are developed for each specific company and task, but there are also ready-made solutions that can be quickly adapted.
Avatar Quests
In this genre of team building, actors like avatars walk around the city or a specialized location, following the commands given to them by online participants in the game. The goal of the game is the same as in most team quests – to agree on a common strategy and act in concert, and the use of a live actor adds charisma and humor to the game.
Online Quests with a Chatbot
A separate subtype of online quests is quests with chatbots. As a playground act different messengers, where teams receive tasks and send answers, and some video conferencing platform serves for informal communication of participants in the process.
The choice of a virtual platform depends on the mechanics of online team building. For some formats, corporate video solutions will suffice, and for others, a specialized platform for online events will be needed.