4 Epic Virtual Team Building Ideas

Employee engagement is everything when it comes to retention and productivity. When employees feel connected to the workplace and their teams, they also feel more dedicated to their role. This is true whether you have on-site staff or remote workers (or a combination!). But oftentimes, it can be challenging to help remote employees bridge the distance gap.

Here are four fun virtual team building ideas that will help you fix that:

1. Restaurant Review

If you have a team scattered across different cities, states, and even countries, a restaurant review can be a fun way for others to get to know those areas. Here’s how it works:

1. Team members can choose a restaurant each month.
2. Each person (it can be the whole team or just one or two employees) will dine there with a plus-one, with the company picking up the tab.
3. They report back to the group with photos, a copy of the menu, and other tidbits about their experience.
4. You can also include a scavenger hunt to accompany the meal: flower, a pitcher of a beverage, a coffee mug, a birthday party, etc.

This can be a fun way to learn about popular local flavors and dishes. Step inside your co-workers’ shoes and inspire your next meal!

2. Food Fridays

With a virtual team, going out to eat together doesn’t have to be off-limits. Food Fridays can be a fun way to bond over lunch. The company pays for each person’s meal and you pick a time to eat together over video chat. Team leads can bring up a topic to talk about or conduct a refresher course on a current process or tool. Or, consider holding a “Town Hall” discussion to let your team voice their opinions on a problem or process.

3. Trivia Games

Trivia is an anything-goes game that companies can customize to fit their own culture and employees. Here at Virtual Coworker, we use Triviamaker.com to host trivia team-building events every other month. Each game has 5-6 teams. We dress up in costumes and have fun learning about each other and building our knowledge banks through random, fun questions. This is an event that you can scale and adapt to any size team. Consider adding rewards to encourage engagement, such as cash prizes, paid time off, or gift cards.

4. Talent Show

Host a talent show for people to showcase their best skills that might not fit in with the normal workflow. For example, you probably have someone on your team who is a skilled musician, chef, or stand-up comedian and didn’t even realize it! Getting to know your virtual coworkers outside of Slack and Zoom can help you feel more connected as a team.

For more virtual team-building ideas, head back to the Virtual Coworker blog.