Virtual meetings can save businesses time and money. However, despite being incredibly cost-effective, it can sometimes prove difficult to engage employees during online get-togethers such as an all hands meeting, an online webinar, or employee onboarding. To get everyone in the right frame of mind and encourage team bonding, you’ll need to think carefully when kicking off those virtual meetings.
All of this is even more important when hosting virtual kick off events. These meetings are generally the first time remote teams assemble to begin work on a project. To make these sessions as successful as possible, clear lines of communication is a must. Whether your focus is on team building or you’re looking to test the problem-solving abilities of your teams, you can get your kick off events off to a great start with the right activities. Need some virtual kick off event ideas to get you started? Read on for everything you need to know.
Why Remote Team Building is So Important
Team building is essential for any workforce. For organizations that operate largely online with remote teams, it’s even more crucial. It doesn’t matter whether you’re migrating from a traditional model to remote work or have always done business virtually, now’s the time to prioritize remote team bonding when hosting virtual meetings.
When working remotely, businesses need to take a different approach to create and maintain a healthy work culture. Team building activities can strengthen bonds between colleagues who don’t usually talk to each other. After all, they can’t stop for an impromptu chat during a coffee break as they would in a regular work environment.
When you integrate remote team building games and activities into your virtual meeting sessions, you give your online team members the chance to connect, break the ice, and forge a real sense of community with colleagues. Have a look at our ideas for a virtual happy hour, 49 fun icebreakers, virtual team building activities, music activities for team building, and fun questions to ask coworkers to keep you inspired.
How to Choose the Best Team Building Activities
If you’ve previously hosted on-site team building sessions, certain activities can be carried over to the virtual space. However, you need to come at things from a different angle when planning and executing a successful virtual event.
For starters, you’ll need to think beyond simple video conferencing. This can create a platform for socializing with features like breakout rooms, you’ll struggle to engage the quieter members of your team.
Focusing on the fun factor is always a good idea when picking a team building activity for an online get-together or virtual sales kickoff meeting. The more enjoyable your virtual team building ideas are, the more likely people are to let their hair down and connect with colleagues on a personal level.
Even if you’re planning an online event packed with casual games and virtual icebreaker questions, make sure you’re sticking to a relatively tight agenda. As with a standard meeting, a broad structure will help keep things on track and allow you to make use of every available second.
You’ll also need to consider what you’re looking to get out of your event. Obviously, a team building event is there to strengthen ties between coworkers. However, try to be more specific when underlining your objectives.
Do you remote teams have trouble working collaboratively on projects? Pick activities that force participants to work together to reach a common goal. Is communication becoming a problem? Choose activities that will encourage participants to reveal more about themselves. As colleagues begin to see each other as real people, they’ll be more inclined to reach out and request advice and support in their day-to-day working lives.
10 Fun Ideas to Start a Virtual Event
Looking for some virtual kick off event ideas to spice up your next online get-together? Below are 10 of the best ways to encourage team bonding, boost morale, and get everyone working together:
Word Pairs
Word pairs is a classic team building game that can be played with groups of any size. If you’re using this game as a casual ice breaker, your word choices can come from just about anywhere. However, it’s easy to make it more on-brand by selecting a glossary that’s tied to your brand and line of business.
Looking for a fresh twist on word pairs? Why not mix things up with an emoji game? Present players with a list of words alongside a list of corresponding emoji sequences. You could keep things broad by framing the game on pop culture references, or tie it to your company and industry sector.
9 Dimensions Team Building Activity
This is a popular team building activity that’s very effective at strengthening relationships between colleagues and building stronger teams. If you’re looking to forge stronger relationships between employees, start by handing out a 9 Dimensions worksheet to participants. You can send these ahead of time. These sheets should include 9 different categories, including family and friends, creative interests, career aspirations, and personal growth. You’re free to choose your own categories and can add more if you wish.
Participants then assign each category a color. Green means they’re more than happy with that side of their life, while yellow means they need to focus on improvement. They can use red if they need to put a lot of effort into a particular area. Once worksheets have been completed and returned, you can pick out participants at random and ask them to explain their responses.
Virtual Scavenger Hunt
If you have time at the start of your team meetings and want to inject some energy into proceedings, a virtual scavenger hunt will go down well. Start by assembling a list of common household items that participants shouldn’t have too much trouble finding. Then when everyone’s assembled, reveal this list. Players then have to amass as many of the items as they can in a set time limit.
Two Truths and a Lie
Here’s another game that’s great at getting people to open up. Each participant takes a turn revealing three things about themselves. They can be innocuous details about their life, or more involved anecdotes. The twist here is that only two of these things will actually be true. Once a participant has taken their turn, everyone else has to guess which one is the lie. You can use online polls to gather everybody’s feedback. The player who manages to mislead the most participants wins.
Team Drawing Challenge
Drawing challenges work surprisingly well online. While you won’t have access to paintbrushes and canvases, you can still create works of art virtually. Use an online whiteboard feature to encourage your teams to work together and think creatively.
Best Background Contest
First impressions are everything, even if you’re dealing in virtual space. In recent years, video backgrounds have become a staple of how we work. Think of kicking off your virtual meeting by running a poll to find out who everyone thinks has the best background. It can be a nod to the picture-perfect home offices of your employees, or based on a virtual background contest.
Virtual Icebreaker Questions
If you only have a very short amount to kick off your virtual meeting, think about using ice breakers as an activity. It can be as simple as asking what everyone has planned for the weekend or what their favorite film of all time is. If you want to streamline things, try using a word cloud to generate answers.
Name That Song
Here’s another nifty activity you can incorporate into any virtual meeting. Play a snippet of a song and get everyone to guess the title of the track. If you want to make things a little easier for everybody, give them a selection of answers to choose from.
Stand Up If…
As with Two Truths and a Lie, this game is perfect for bringing the human touch to online meetings. This classic elimination game makes it easy to get to know the real people behind job titles.
You can use just about any Never Have I Ever question here. It’s fine to get a little mischievous with your questioning, but make sure it’s appropriate for the office, even if it’s a virtual one. Participants have to raise a hand if they’ve ever done one of the things you list. It’s great for establishing common ground between remote teams.
Movie Trivia Challenge
A rapid fire round of trivia questions is always welcome in a virtual meeting. Whether you’ve scheduled a weekly get-together or are planning a team training session, make sure you’re starting our event with a solid stack of trivia questions. It’s always best to choose a subject that most people will be familiar with, with the silver screen offering you plenty of inspiration.
Hosting Virtual Kick Off Events with Gloww
While hosting a virtual kick off event is straightforward enough, you need to strike the right note when putting together an agenda and selecting activities. Even though participants will be working together for a considerable stretch, this might be the first time they’ve interacted. To avoid any awkwardness and encourage open lines of communication, engage employees with icebreakers and team building activities.
Are you planning on hosting a virtual kick off event? You’ll first need a video conferencing platform that’s reliable and packed with user-friendly features. With Gloww, you have absolutely everything you need to create memorable kick off events and online meetings. You can create custom sessions in no time at all thanks to a huge selection of ready-made templates. If you’d rather put together your own bespoke event template, you’re free to do so. What’s more, there’s no shortage of exciting activities and interactive features to take advantage of here.
If you’re keen to get the ball rolling, you can get started with Gloww today. Thinking of using Gloww to host weekly get-togethers or handle virtual onboarding? Check out pricing plans to learn more about our advanced features. Do you have questions about the platform? Get in touch with the team.
