According to research, remote working benefits not only employees but also the business. Data demonstrates that remote workers are more motivated and do higher-quality work. At the same time, organizations benefit from reduced absenteeism, reduced employee turnover, and higher profitability after implementing work-from-home schemes.
There are several disadvantages to working from home—reduced communication and collaboration and increased loneliness due to a lack of face-to-face interactions. Thankfully, there are simple solutions, such as online team-building activities. Team building is critical to your company development because when a workforce feels united and trusted confidence and satisfaction rise, people feel much more comfortable giving ideas, and productivity soars.
Maintaining your remote workers as a team can be difficult. When you are not physically present, the essential ingredients of excellent communication, cooperation, shared goals, and, of course, might miss the fun. You must ensure that they are kept alive remotely. Remote team leaders must always be on the lookout for new opportunities to engage and connect virtual employees. This includes developing and sustaining positive relationships inside the team, no matter where in the world they are located.
Importance
You are accompanied by your coworkers in the workplace and spend 8 hours a day, most days of each week, together, so becoming a solid unit comes easily. You are familiar with each other's peculiarities and what everyone enjoys doing beyond work. Because of these interpersonal interactions, when team members need assistance with a task, they shouldn't think over who to ask. They can seamlessly integrate to achieve more promising outcomes.
The method of drawing together remote employees is known as virtual team building. It will assist your team form stronger ties by providing a collaborative atmosphere akin to a workplace setting. Work from home's physical separation can easily transform into emotional detachment, which contributes to loneliness. And if your employees feel alienated, they will be hesitant to collaborate with their coworkers. This is why it is critical to building a welcoming team culture on which remote workers can thrive. Virtual team building initiatives include various carefully crafted tactics, games, and activities to bring greater human engagement to virtual work. It will assist your team in connecting, making them feel like they are part of a group. A happier workforce leads to higher talent retention.
Remote Team Building Activities You Can Try
Your staff could get to know one another wherever they are. You can try various team-building activities, ranging from basic and impromptu games to highly planned programs. Find ideas for a fun virtual team bonding strategy in the list below to keep your team interested and bonded.
Ice Breakers
Engaging in a small chat with acquaintances can be uncomfortable at times, so encourage your employees to take part in organized ice breaker exercises where they can learn more about one other. A simple online search will yield several similar ideas. There are so many that you could incorporate an ice-breaker activity at each meeting.
Virtual Break Room
Simple conversations happen so casually in the office that you might not notice them at all – but they're major team-building tools. Fortunately, you can duplicate this virtually, and there are a few solutions to make this possible. One of them is virtual team building in a break room. It was somewhere your team members may log in and join during their lunch hour or tea break, allowing them to catch up much like they would in the workplace. To keep these efforts successful, the team manager must ensure that they are encouraged to be used. The virtual venues truly seem like a community becoming a part of the typical remote working day.
Virtual Company Events
When everyone gathers for business-wide activities and meetings, the organization truly feels like a team. So help ensure you don't forget to include these in your remote agenda. You can run virtual corporate events in the same way that you would a physical event. Include a schedule, a host, a variety of guests, and the ability to ask questions. The only difference is that everyone participates through video. This truly helps to pull the entire team together and make them feel proud and enthused about the business for which they work.
Daily Snapshots
The daily snapshot concept is indeed a very simple technique to strengthen teams. Inspire coworkers to upload a picture of something daily, whether it's what they're doing for lunch or the new sweatshirt they're wearing and enjoying. Teams can then react to the photos and strike up a conversation. It's a simple method to have a non-work-related discussion each day, and it helps to link team members by providing regular perspectives into their personal lives. Side note: While not everyone on the team must contribute a picture day after day, ensure at least one is shared to keep this a regular topic of conversation.
Virtual Happy Hour
Plan a virtual happy hour during which team members are urged to participate in a video conference, drink at home or goodie of their choice, and play games online together. Charades, Catchphrases, Family Feud, Pictionary, Trivia - any game focused on communication - are excellent employee team bonding activities for remote employees.
Lunch or Dinner Date Together
What could be more delightful than actually knowing and understanding your employees over a delicious lunch or dinner with delicious dishes? It isn't easy to do this virtually, but you can still take all or most of the fun aspects and make this work. It only needs a bit more imagination. Every once in a while, surprise your team with a food delivery that is slightly different from what they would typically order or prepare. You can host online dinners or simply let everyone enjoy it with their own families. In any case, it provides your team something else to talk about afterward.
Virtual Movie Night
Inviting your employees to spend time together outside of work allows them to easily bond and eventually open up. How are you going to do this while everyone is working from home? Using a video conference service, live stream a movie and allow everyone on your team to attend.
Personality Tests
It isn't easy to make a connection with people over a monitor. You will most likely only communicate to your colleagues in a professional work environment when necessary. It's impossible to figure out what kind of individuals they are and what makes them tick in such a situation. However, knowing that information may make working together a little tad easier. If you genuinely want your team to know one another, start with getting to know themselves. You can organize activities based on a personality assessment and share results afterward.
Recognition
One of the most important advantages of being part of a group is having the encouragement of your teammates to keep you going and their appreciation of your accomplishments. However, it would help to cultivate this when your team is virtual because you cannot express your gratitude in person. A reward and recognition platform can be an excellent approach to guarantee that recognition gets ingrained in daily life. When employees recognize and respect each other's efforts, it draws the team together, regardless of where they are.
As part of rewards and recognition, you may even gift them accessories or equipment that would help your workers from home feel good about work and themselves. In this continuous pandemic, as more companies permit their employees to work from home indefinitely, they are also looking at giving other bonuses in the forms of accessories or equipment such as standing desks. These enable employees to safely and productively complete tasks even when working away from the office. Employees want such perks because standing workstations help keep back problems at bay and stimulate mobility throughout the day or shift. FlexiSpot is a reputable company that can handle this for corporations and organizations, offering benefits such as installment plans, direct delivery to employee locations, and extended trial and warranty periods.
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Whether your company has a physical location or not, workplace culture is critical. A sense of teamwork ensures that your virtual team can blend their talents and strengths together and respect one another. Team building is even more crucial for remote employees because it leads to effective collaboration.
