During these challenging times, almost all companies had to completely change their work environment. COVID-19 has turned a lot of teams into remote teams and that can become a lonely experience for employees who are used to being around their co-workers.
At Saegus, digital transformation, collaborative tools and doing things remotely is part of our work. Although, with the spread of the health crisis, we had to adapt even more. That’s why we have challenged ourselves to stay innovative and bring new ideas upfront. Our goal? Keep what matters most to us: human connection. Since the beginning of the lockdown, every Thursday at 6pm, our team has been doing team building activities. We had monthly team buildings before, we just had to adapt them to the situation in both frequency and remoteness.
How do we keep closeness that makes a team great? How can team members connect and keep up with what is going on with the distance? How do you keep team building activities fun and not repetitive? These are all questions we asked ourselves as a team. We also wanted for everybody to get involved in the creation of these activities and to keep the team united.
We have put together a list of 5 remote team-building ideas which we have tested, and that we would like to share. These ideas have been tried, tested and adopted in a remote environment, but could easily be tried physically.
Every week a team of two co-workers (different duo every week) are designated to organize and lead the challenge. At 6pm, we all connect to a video meeting on any communication and collaboration platform. The organizers start by explaining the rules of the challenge and the activity starts. Team buildings last between 45 minutes and 1 hour.
#1 Team Building Challenge 1: “Surprise!”
Preparation scale (1star=easy):
Organizers: 2
Time needed: 45min to 1h
The surprise challenge is a good challenge to start team building activities or to allow the team members to express themselves and show a part of their personality that may not have been known by others. People will have an opportunity to express themselves for a few minutes without constraints. The main part of this challenge consists in giving the opportunity to every member of the team to show of a talent, a part of them or just something fun to their co-workers.
How it unfolds:
1 — Each person enters the meeting with their camera turned off.
2 — One by one, each person has 2 minutes to turn on their camera and surprise everybody in any way possible. Here are a few examples:
This is the first challenge we did remotely, it is easy to do, and it paved the way for the next challenges. It builds a will to be creative and motivates the next team to come up with a more creative challenge.
Tip: Go further in this challenge by adding questions about your co-worker’s way of working from home. Adapt these questions to your team’s mood and how comfortable they are in sharing a part of their personality as you don’t want make it intrusive.
#2 Team Building Challenge 2: Guess the slippers
Preparation scale (1star=easy):
Organizers: 2
Time needed: 1h — 1hour 30
Whiteboard: Ms Whiteboard, Klaxoon, Miro …
The “guess the slippers” challenge is very entertaining and easy to do. The goal is to figure out which pair of slippers belongs to which team member. You will be surprised to discover what your co-workers have on their feet while on professional meetings!
For this challenge we used a whiteboard and a personalized template where everybody could collaborate simultaneously.
The organizers prepare a template for everyone to first post a picture of themselves, then one of their slippers.
How it unfolds:
1 — Everyone uploads a picture of themselves on the template
2 — Everyone takes a picture of their slippers/footwear they are wearing during the meeting and uploads it to the template. Then the figuring out which slipper belongs to whom game starts.
Tip: This challenge can be adapted to bigger teams or teams that are in different scenarios than working from home, you can divide people in small groups and compare the results of each team for example. Plus, using slippers is just an example to stimulate communication within your team. I would be curious to know what you can come up with!
#3 Team Building Challenge 3: Digital board game
Preparation scale (1star=easy):
Organizers: 2
Time needed: 45min to 1h
Whiteboard: Ms Whiteboard, Klaxoon, Miro …
The challenge speaks for itself, playing a board game, but remotely. The good thing about this challenge is that you can make your own rules. The game explained in this example is a game that was created by two of my co-workers who came up with the board and who adapted all the questions to the team.
You can download the board and adapt it to your team using here.
Each square has a meaning which needs to be determined by the organizers. Here are a few examples:
The squid squares are questions referring to the team like: How many team members are 25 years or younger?
The ghost squares make you go backwards 2 squares.
The diamond squares make you move 2 squares forward.
The squares with pictures are dares like: Singing a song or miming something the others have to guess.
The “save” squares are general knowledge questions like: when was Barack Obama elected?
How it unfolds:
1- Divide the group into smaller teams
2- Share the digital dice link and the link to the white board to the team
3- Ask the first team to roll the dice
4- Each team has a color on the template and the organizers place the color on the box the dice indicated. The first team to reach the end wins.
This game can bring some positive competition within the team. If you can adapt the dares and questions to your team, you will end up with a very implicated and motivated team.
Tip: This challenge can be time consuming; to keep this game entertaining, it is important to keep track of time and anticipate how to accelerate certain parts of it, especially if you have more than 4 teams.
#4 Team Building Challenge 4: #GettyMuseumChallenge
Preparation scale (1star=easy):
Organizers: 2
Time needed: 45min to 1h
The #GettyMuseumChallenge is a popular challenge which flooded social media during this period of lockdown. The goal of this challenge is to recreate famous paintings at home by taking a picture of yourself or with your family. You can find some examples here.
How it unfolds:
1- Paintings are presented to the team
2- Each team member has a designated painting which they have to re-create in 15 minutes
3- After 15 minutes, the pictures are taken and revealed to the team
You will be surprised of what people can come up within 15 minutes. These creative moments often allow people to reveal themselves and their personality.
Tip: There are times in this challenge when it can take time to receive the pictures or downloading them on the prepared presentation. That is why our team came up with a little quiz on art history that was the perfect way to distract everyone while updating the pictures.
#5 Team Building Challenge 5: “How well do you know your co-workers?”
Preparation scale (1star=easy):
Organizers: 2
Time needed: 1h15
Whiteboard: Ms Whiteboard, Klaxoon, Miro …
This challenge is a theme-oriented challenge. It can be about music, movies, art, hobbies or any topic. My team came up with this innovative way of sharing their taste in music.
How it unfolds:
1- Through a form, asl a few questions to your team before the challenge: what song reminds them of their childhood or their “secret song” that they love listing to but won’t disclose it when asked.
2- A few songs are played of each category of questions, the team then has to guess which song corresponds to which member of the team
This game is often a way of unifying a team, through music or art or whatever the theme you chose, people can learn more about their co-workers.
Tip: You can create a team playlist after the challenge for everyone to listen to. Be wary of the time, every song will not be played within 45 minutes or 1 hour, it is important to listen to at least one song per person.
Your turn!
Within our team and Saegus as a whole, we have tried to adapt our team building activities remotely. We found innovative and creative ways to keep this contact between the co-workers that is so important and believe me, it works. It’s important to keep these team building moments engaging and short so that the will to join and be part of them never fades.
We are very curious to see what you can come up with in your team! Feel free to share in the comments what you have done to find fun and innovative ways of keeping your team motivated.
Rédigé par Fabio Velly, Consultant Acceleration Tactics