It can be hard to spark connections and encourage cooperation between remote employees. However, team-building activities can help fan the flames of interaction, bringing a scattered workforce closer together. Scavenger hunts are a favorite in many workplaces, forcing employees to put their heads together as they solve clues and decipher riddles.
The good news for remote businesses is that they also work particularly well online, even if you do need to be a bit more creative with our approach. Looking for virtual scavenger hunt ideas for remote employees? We’ve got all the inspiration you need.
Virtual Scavenger Hunts – The Perfect Team-Building Activity
Scavenger hunts are one of the best team-building activities around. Solving all those clues requires constant communication, breaking down barriers between employees who’ve rarely spoken. The more difficult the clues are, the more your teams get to fine-tune their problem-solving abilities.
A virtual scavenger hunt brings the benefits of this classic team-building game to the digital sphere. Even if your employees are scattered across the world, they can still come together and connect with their colleagues beyond the usual email chains.
How to Create Your Virtual Scavenger Hunt
Scavenger hunts work incredibly well online. Using a video conferencing platform like Gloww will ensure your virtual hunt runs like clockwork. What’s more, you can use our scavenger hunt template to save even more time. However, a successful event still requires careful planning. To make your event as memorable as possible, consider the following:
Pick a Time That Suits Everyone
When your teams work remotely, schedule clashes are common. Make sure you’re picking a start time that works for everyone, no matter where they’re based.
Draw Up a List of Clues
No hunt is complete with a list of brain-busting clues. Make sure you’ve drawn up enough clues to keep your teams occupied for the duration of your event. You’ll also need to share clear instructions beforehand so everyone understands the rules of the game.
Host Your Scavenger Hunt
Now you’re ready to host your event. First, think about how long you want your event to run for. Have you penciled in a couple of hours, or do you want to make your event a week-long affair? If you’re taking the latter approach, bring your employees back together for a virtual event to reveal the results and award prizes.
Virtual Scavenger Hunts Ideas for Remote Employees
Ready to reap the team-building benefits of an online scavenger hunt? Think about incorporating some of these classic themes into your virtual event.
1. Desert Island
Perfect if you’re looking to incorporate a scavenger hunt into a longer event, Desert Island forces participants to work together to solve puzzles and escape their tropical surroundings.
2. Space Exploration Hunt
In this game, participants can embark on a virtual journey through space. Provide your remote team images or descriptions of celestial bodies, spacecraft, or astronomical phenomena. They must then identify each object and learn interesting facts about space along the way.
3. Travel Destination Hunt
This travel-themed scavenger hunt sees players explore iconic world landmarks. Perfect if your remote team is an international one, this game is particularly challenging, calling for a combination of problem-solving ability and creativity.
4. Virtual Food Hunt
In this scavenger hunt perfect for food enthusiasts, participants search for specific recipes, ingredients, or dishes based on provided clues or categories. They can share photos or descriptions of their findings, sparking conversations about different cuisines and cooking techniques.
5. Literary Hunt
Dive into the world of literature by providing quotes, characters, or book titles for participants to identify. They can search their bookshelves, online libraries, or literary databases to find the answers. .
6. Around the World
Around the World is another geography-inspired scavenger hunt adventure. In this online team-building activity, participants must decipher a long list of clues and mini-game challenges inspired by different countries or cultures before the timer runs out.
7. Language Skills Scavenger Hunt
Want to make a scavenger hunt more challenging? Simply translate your list of clues into another language. Your teams can still turn to translator tools, but they’ll still then need to decipher those cryptic clues.
8. Retail Therapy Scavenger Hunt
With this game, you’ll quickly identify the shopaholics in your ranks. Create quirky shopping lists of unusual items, set a budget, and then ask teams to find the best online deals possible. Those who come back with the lowest spend win the game.
9. Selfie Hunt
Rather than have everyone haul their finds back to their desk, get them to take a selfie in front of them instead. Once the scavenger hunt is over, you can raise a few laughs by sharing everyone’s selfie galleries.
10. Kitchen Scavenger Hunt
To keep scavenger hunt lists simple, stick to items that most people are going to own. Kitchen utensils and cookware are obvious choices.
11. Fashion Finds
Have fun with this creative take on the humble scavenger hunt. Come up with a theme and ask participants to raid their closets and put together an outfit inspired by it.
12. QR Code Hunt
Is your business a hybrid one? Bridge the gap between remote and on-site employees by bringing QR codes into the mix. Remote employees solve the riddles, with those on-site scanning codes as they go.
13. DIY Craft Hunt
Challenge participants to create or find specific craft projects using common household materials. They can follow provided instructions or come up with their own creative interpretations.
14. Finding Something That’s…
This scavenger hunt variant leaves things open to interpretation. Instead of a list of named objects, participants need to find things that relate to the statement you’ve just made.
15. Scour Social Media
Give your employees a free pass to use social media during office hours with this scavenger hunt variant. Create a checklist full of seasonal selfies, political tweets, and more, then ask your team to find as many of them as they can by scouring through their feeds.
16. Bring Some Trivia into the Mix
If standard scavenger hunts aren’t difficult enough for your liking, make your teams work harder by having to answer trivia questions before they’re given the next clue. Check out our mini trivia, but also world, Women’s history month, and other trivia templates.
17. Riddle–Style Scavenger Hunt
Riddles are a classic feature of scavenger hunts. Be as abstract as possible to put everyone’s gray matter through the ringer as they search for the next clue.
18. Photograph Challenge Hunt
Challenge participants to take photos of specific scenarios or themes within their homes or neighborhoods. For example, they might be tasked with capturing a sunset, a funny sign, or a pet doing a trick.
19. Hunt for High School Mementos
Most people hold onto a few things from their school days. Think about adding school jerseys, diplomas, and yearbooks to your scavenger hunt list.
20. The Art Thief Mystery Game
An online scavenger hunt filled with mystery, The Art Thief challenges players to track down the eponymous villain. Teams are handed a dossier of clues at the beginning, before having to embark on an online adventure to fill in the blanks.
Host Your Next Online Scavenger Hunt with Gloww
An excellent addition to any team-building event, scavenger hunts will bring the social element back to a remote workforce. While it’s not as simple as playing it in the real world, hosting a scavenger hunt virtually is relatively easy with the right tools. The most important element to any team-building event is a great video conferencing platform and with Gloww, you have the perfect solution.
Offering all the usual conferencing tools and more, Gloww lets you create custom event sessions in moments. Make your next team-building session as unique as you want, or turn to ready-made templates if you’re in a hurry. Add games and activities to keep participants engaged, or foster connections with collaborative tools. Looking for other cool ideas? Here are some virtual birthday party ideas, as well as team building ideas for introverts. We also have articles on Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day to help you celebrate.
Get started with Gloww today so you can begin planning your virtual scavenger hunt. Want to explore some of our more advanced features? Have a look at your premium pricing tiers to see what’s on offer. Need to ask us something? Get in touch with any questions.
