Keeping a strong team environment is difficult in the current climate. With most people still working from home, it’s hard to stay connected to everyone from your workplace.
Video Conferencing and emails are great ways of bringing together and contacting your team. As we know video conferencing like Zoom is mostly used in order to get your daily jobs done but having an end of the week activity or team building exercise, is another way to keep the team connected and establish workplace bonds.
Working remotely can make you feel isolated and lonely. Using virtual team activities can help you feel supported and help remind you of all the positive people you have in your life and workplace.
A strong team, even while we are all working from the safety of our homes helps foster positive workplace relationships. Keeping connected to each other is a great way not only to check in on everyone, but ensure everyone is keeping up their group trust, communication skills and know how to work with each other from a distance in order to get tasks done and keep you all on track.
Together we have come up with a few different ideas that you could use in order to build up your team connectedness in isolation.
Hosted Online Team Events and Activities
Virtual activities and challenges are fun innovative way to challenge your team in a group dynamic. A group strengthening activity centre located in the heart of Melbourne has adapted to the new current climate and is now offering online team building. Amazing businesses like the team at Urban Quest understand the importance of reconnecting and engaging your teams whilst we are all still isolating. All team building sessions are run through their own gaming platform. These businesses have everything sorted and set up, so your team doesn’t have to lift a finger! The sessions are simple and easy to join via Zoom. The online activities are a fun and great way to bring some laughs, happiness, and connectedness to your team. They can spend some time working together, focusing on completing their task, hopefully forgetting about any other stresses and spending some virtual time with each other.
If you are interested in completing an online activity like this, we recommend the great team at Urban Quest. Take a look at their website here.
Trivia Night
Trivia nights whilst easy to set up can be a quick, simple and cheap way to bring some light-hearted competitiveness to your workplace. Having an end of week Trivia gives staff something to look forward to. Everyone can be grouped into teams which creates new workplace relationships. A monthly competition with a small prize at the end of the month may encourage excitement and involvement from staff! Trivia questions can be easily found from a quick Google search, or a team member can nominate themselves to create a category and some questions of their choice. Everyone loves the thrill of getting some answers correct, give it a go with your team!
Fitness Challenge
These kinds of challenges don’t only encourage teamwork but help to keep everyone both mentally and physically healthy whilst in isolation. Fitness challenges can be done from the safety of your home and can be both easy and hard depending on the team’s fitness level. From push up’s to squat challenges all kinds of physical activities are welcomed. A great idea is to use the Strava app. This app lets you set up a group challenge, to see who has walked or run the most for the month. Physical activity not only is vital for your health but can also be a great way to start or finish your day, helping create routine which is beneficial when working from home. These activities can be safely done in the hour of exercise we get daily. Remember to remind your team to stay in their 5km radius!
These are just a few ideas, but there are heaps you could do depending on what your team usually enjoy doing. Get creative! Creating virtual team connectedness is a fantastic way to transform your remote working team. Encourage your staff to participate in these sessions to keep engaged, appreciated and most importantly connected.
We are excited to hear about all your virtual connectedness experiences. Enjoy!