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Investing in virtual team building activities benefits your team in several ways. Team building has been a time-honored tradition that helps to improve workplace relationships and build stronger bonds among team members. However, with the shift towards remote work, there is a growing need for virtual activities that can bring teams together, especially as more people transition to working remotely full-time.
What is Virtual Team Building?
A virtual team building activity is anything a distributed team does together that is deliberately not work. The practical appeal is that it removes the logistics: no travel, no hotel budget, no finding a date everyone can physically reach.
That constraint changes what works. An activity built for a room — where people drift between conversations and read each other’s body language — usually falls flat once it is nine faces in a grid. The ones that survive the move give everybody something to do with their hands, or a reason to speak that is not “does anyone have anything to add”.
Team Building Benefits
Team building events give managers a chance to get close to their employees and create meaningful relationships that will last them through tough times.
1. Improved Communication
Team building activities are a great way to create an environment that is more relaxed and fun. These team-building events give coworkers something interesting they can talk about besides work, which helps them connect with each other better as well!
2. Increased Productivity
When employees are comfortable communicating with one another, they’re more likely to reach out and discuss concerns. This increases productivity as well because of improved collaboration on tasks among the group!
3. Keep People Connected
Remote work removes the incidental contact an office supplies for free: the corridor, the kettle, the two minutes before a meeting starts. None of that was ever on anyone’s calendar, which is exactly why nobody notices it is gone until the only conversations left are scheduled ones about deliverables.
A booked activity puts that time back deliberately. It is a poor imitation of a corridor, but it is a scheduled hour in which talking about something other than the work is the point rather than a digression — and it reaches the people who joined remotely and have never met anyone in person.
4. Build Morale
Team building events are a great way to encourage teamwork and excite your employees about working together. By organizing team-building activities, management shows that they care enough for their staff members by investing in this event which will result in more productive work environments where everyone feels valued!
5. Mental Health Improvement
Work is stressful in stretches, and a distributed team is harder to read: a colleague having a bad month is far less visible over video than across a desk. An hour that is explicitly not about deliverables gives people a reason to be in each other’s company without an agenda item attached, which is a modest thing but not a worthless one.
It is worth being honest about the size of the claim. An activity is not a substitute for reasonable workloads or proper support, and no cooking class fixes a team that is under-resourced. What it does is give the week a break in it that people did not have to arrange themselves.
6. Have Fun
Virtual team-building activities are an excellent opportunity to socialize and bond with your co-workers. You can have fun, relax or share experiences in ways that would otherwise not be possible on-site!
Help Your Team
The test for any of these is whether people turn up a second time. A first session gets attendance out of curiosity or obligation; a second one has to be earned. The activities that pass tend to have something concrete at the end of them — a dish, a drink, a board — rather than a round of questions and a promise to do it again.
For more ideas Rockoly is always happy to help your team connect through Virtual Team Building Cooking Classes, Wine-Tastings or Virtual Happy Hours.