Remote working has recently become one of the most desirable benefits a company can offer. The freedom to work from anywhere with more flexible hours is what makes employees prefer this option more as opposed to the 9-to-5 working schedule in the office.

Despite this great advantage, one of the downsides of remote working is that it may drift workers apart which can certainly affect the overall company culture later on. In order to prevent this from happening, many companies are implementing numerous events and activities that will promote a healthier remote culture and give employees an opportunity to get together from afar.

For example, organizing a virtual retreat with fun team-building activities is an excellent way to foster a high-performance remote culture. All you need to do is choose an activity your workers will enjoy the most and turn your regular workday into an elevating experience.

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A Coffee Session

If it’s been a while since you’ve had your morning coffee break with your workers, then organizing a coffee session may be the first team-building activity you can engage in. This can easily become part of everyone’s new remote working routine where you will all make coffee and get together every Monday morning to chat.

Organizing such a relaxing activity can help employees bond more often and talk about anything that isn’t work-related. By doing so, their communication skills will be instantly improved which is crucial where in-person conversations aren’t feasible.

And if you like this, you can organize another coffee session at the end of the week to give everyone a chance to relax from the long week.

A Game Show Competition

Arranging a game show competition is another very popular team-building activity. Having remote teams go head to head answering questions from various fields can certainly get everyone excited especially if they race against the clock.

The rules of the game are simple. All you need to do is come up with at least twenty questions from different categories such as pop culture, history or sports and divide your employees into two or more teams. Have each team answer a question from the category they choose and give points every time they answer correctly.

If the teams’ scores are tied at the end, create a bonus round where each team will answer as many questions as possible in thirty seconds.

Personal Facts Guessing Game

You may think you know your coworkers, but the reality is you probably don’t know much about their likes and interests outside the office. To learn more about their personality and preferences, you should consider organizing a personal facts guessing game. It is very easy to set up and you can really get a laugh out of it.

To do it right, you will need to assign a leader for each team who will gather some personal facts about everyone else. The leaders will compile all the information onto a document that’s shared with each individual in the team. Next to each fact should be an empty column where each team member will have to guess who is the employee in question.

Remote Escape Room

A more challenging, but equally exciting team-building activity you can engage your employees in is a remote escape room. The whole game consists of solving puzzles and overcoming tasks as if they would in a physical room while trying to escape.

Besides fun, another great benefit employees will get out of this game is the opportunity to learn how to collaborate with each other better. Teams will have to follow their guide while figuring out the clues in their digital dashboard in order to complete their mission in a given time.

And with themes like breaking out of prison or finding the gold, rest assured that this will become your employees’ favorite team-building activity.

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Virtual Movie Club

Another relaxing team-building activity you should consider is starting a virtual movie club. Have each employee suggest a movie or even a TV show for everyone to watch and get together once a week or month to share your thoughts.

If you want to make it more interesting, then you can create an online quiz with questions about the movie everyone has watched. Send the document out to each team member and give them a few days to answer the questions.

Opting for such team-building activity is an excellent way for remote teams to socialize and develop effective communication skills while encouraging them to engage in critical thinking and be open to differing opinions.

Building A Storyline

Building a storyline is a traditional team-building activity especially if you work with individuals who aren’t afraid to let their imaginations run wild. It is fun and very easy to set up as it involves getting your team members on a video call and ask one of them to start a story.

The first person should begin with an opening sentence and another incomplete one. The next individual should complete the previous line and add another incomplete sentence. This way each employee will have a chance to participate and contribute in making a story.

The whole purpose of the game is for everyone to practice their collaborative and listening skills while developing a comprehensible and funny story structure.

Bingo

Another popular team-building activity you can play with your coworkers is Bingo. In fact, this is one of the most favorite games among people as it takes them back to those earlier days in school when everyone was playing to be exempt from doing homework or to win a piece of candy.

However, for your virtual retreat, employees can play for a free lunch or a cup of coffee made by their coworkers.

To play, you will need to distribute cards to your team members either via email or by sharing a document with everyone. If you want to make it more challenging, create more than one template and whoever finishes a row first is the winner.

A Virtual Party

No virtual retreat would be complete if you don’t organize some kind of a celebration. Whether it is someone’s birthday or your company’s anniversary, organizing a virtual party will certainly help take off some steam and allow workers to bond with each other virtually.

For example, if you are celebrating an employee’s birthday, you can turn it into a theme party and have everyone dress up accordingly. To make it more amusing, each coworker can tell a funny story or an experience they have had with the birthday person in order to get a laugh out of it.

Also, don’t forget to send out a gift basket to show how much you appreciate and care for your coworker.

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Final Thoughts

Even though we are physically far away from our coworkers, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take a break from work and do something fun and exciting. Organizing a virtual retreat with enjoyable team-building activities is a great excuse to increase bonding time with everyone from the office and spend the usual workday a bit more differently. Just choose any activity you like from the list and get ready for some laughs.