What are the 6 Benefits of Online Team Building Activities
Virtual team building activities or online team-building exercises needn’t strike fear in the very souls of remote employees. They get a bad rep because online team building events can often be tedious, boring, and unproductive.
However, when done right, team-building activities have multiple benefits, including increased employee engagement, improved communication, and boosted team performance.
Understanding and implementing effective virtual team building can change the dynamics of your remote work environment significantly. For organizations based in the Netherlands, we offer a wide range of effective virtual team building activities that are designed to foster collaboration and engagement, even when your team is dispersed.
Moreover, these activities also play a crucial role in developing shared values within the team, which is an essential aspect of a cohesive and productive team. You can learn more about how to develop team building shared values through team building activities on our website.
Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of virtual team-building events before showcasing some examples for you to use with your remote teams.
1. Connect Teams and Combat Loneliness
As more people work from home, there is a risk of loneliness as people don’t have the opportunity to speak face-to-face with their colleagues. Working remotely can often mean less contact with other remote workers, so there is no way to build camaraderie. At the very least, virtual team-building events provide an outlet for remote teams to connect with each team member.
A virtual team-building exercise can provide remote employees with that much-needed human interaction.
Over and above satisfying the group’s needs for companionship, we know that relationally connected teammates develop trust and improve communication skills between teams – this increases productivity based on good morale.
A well-organised virtual team-building event can create positive relationships in a fun environment that will benefit both your employee morale and your business.
2. Build Collaboration Skills
An effective virtual team-building activity will ensure your employees work better together as they solve problems, bouncing ideas off each other using effective communication skills toward a common goal.
The number one aim of team bonding sessions is to create an effective team. Encourage employees to build their collaborative skills through fun activities that challenge them to work together to complete tasks.
Effective workplace relationships must be based on solid communication so that team members know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Who has the leadership qualities? Who tries to boost team morale? Which team members are struggling to cooperate with the rest of the group?
Successful companies use these virtual team-building sessions to effectively build key skills through fun, challenging activities – going far beyond the basic icebreaker questions to engage in meaningful tasks that lead to future success as a team.
3. Virtual Team Building Can Increase Motivation
It’s worth remembering, though, that an excellent online team-building activity is not just about completing tasks and problem-solving.
Virtual team building activities offer a unique way of reducing stress and improving the atmosphere of the remote workplace. You can boost employee morale by simply encouraging employees to have a bit of fun and let off steam.
Providing some fresh interest to the regular workweek has many benefits for your team, especially for remote work when there are often not too many chances to be social. Simply gathering for a virtual lunch can even increase motivation in your team and inject a little positivity.
4. Virtual Team Building Activities Can Reinforce Company Values
One of the benefits of team-building events is that you can use these occasions to reinforce company culture and company values.
This becomes even more essential to remote workers who don’t interact with a physical work environment day in, day out. That means that you need to communicate your company culture through other means. One outlet for this is through virtual team-building activities that deliberately seek to highlight elements of your company culture.
For instance, many companies incorporate their CSR initiatives into their online activities to remind remote workers of what the company holds dear. Alternatively, the choice of online activity can often reflect some element of the company – a wacky round-the-world virtual traveller hunt can remind employees of the company’s international nature, for example.
5. Boost Creativity
A core tenet of any team-building session is that better communication boosts creativity. Virtual team-building activities challenge your team to problem-solve by thinking of fresh ways to look at things. This is often accomplished by sharing ideas, brainstorming, and engaging in out-of-the-box thinking in a group.
Excellent virtual events embrace this idea and create an environment where people feel comfortable sharing ideas with other team members. This willingness to share boosts creativity across the team and will ultimately benefit the whole team in the future with creative approaches and solutions to business problems.
6. Prevent Zoom Fatigue
Many workplaces have had to navigate the remote work landscape. Whether you have worked in a remote team for a long time or if the pandemic sent your team online, the fact is that the work environment has shifted. This means that remote work in one form or another is here to stay and part of the new normal for many employees.
Many employees’ schedules feature a succession of video-conferencing calls as they collaborate with teams. This can lead to ‘Zoom fatigue’, with symptoms including end-of-the-day exhaustion, irritability, and achy muscles and joints.
Besides the usual advice of taking a step away from the computer regularly to stretch and exercise, it may seem counter-intuitive to recommend a virtual team-building exercise to remedy Zoom fatigue.
Yet, a fun, engaging activity can act as a stimulus to break up the monotony of those back-to-back meetings. As such, they can genuinely have an energising impact, injecting some much-needed laughter and positivity to the day to refresh your team.
Examples of Virtual Team Building Activities
There is now an abundance of virtual team-building activities and games that can be carried out over any distance from the comfort of your own home.
Here are some examples of fantastic virtual team-building activities from the developers at Making Teams that ensure the benefits of team building are realised. These exercises build strong interpersonal connections in your virtual team while developing essential skillsets related to problem-solving, collaboration, and communication.
Virtual Escape Rooms
Virtual teams collaborate in a race against time to escape locked virtual rooms by solving riddles and completing challenges.
They must cooperate and manage time effectively, sometimes splitting up tasks so people can work on elements concurrently.
This is a fun task but can sometimes prove challenging! Every team member will need to play their part.
Virtual Amazing Race
The Amazing Race virtual team building activity sees team members put into separate groups to compete in a series of intimidating tasks based on the famous television series, ‘The Amazing Race’.
They need to cooperate, delegate tasks, and combine their skillsets to win the race that sees them explore the world virtually.
They will be tasked with various challenges and fact-finding missions with various possible solutions, interacting in real-time with people via video call. They may need to complete a Muay Thai challenge with an instructor in Thailand or tackle Japanese puzzles in Tokyo.
The variety of tasks available means you can focus on specific skillsets you want to improve, all in a fun, engaging format that allows your teams to get a little competitive.
Virtual Treasure Hunt
Another example of virtual meeting fun is our virtual treasure hunts that allow a remote team to explore a virtual world. Utilising VR and video-conferencing software, teams have to put their skills to the test in a series of cryptic challenges to complete puzzles and progress toward the treasure. This enables teams to engage in fun activities while also learning about different cultures – great for international companies.
Benefits of Team Building Activities
There are numerous benefits of virtual team building activities, both for the well-being of your team members and the overall success of your company.
Reach out and start a conversation with us today to see how we can help with your virtual team-building event.
