The pandemic has changed the way we work and many teams have adopted work from home mode. While there is true that team building is a lot tougher when people are working remotely but it should not stop you from organising awesome virtual team building games to foster bonding between co-workers. Forging these bonds promotes team harmony, streamline communication and increase productivity. Here are some creative, tried and tested, virtual team bonding ideas for your next activities!

1. Classic Icebreaker Games

Even though you and your team have been working together for a while and you feel you know much about one another, you are likely to only understand the ‘work’ part of your co-workers. Use these icebreakers questions sessions to discover interesting tidbits about each other.

2. Virtual Lunch Date

Missing lunch with teammates at the workplace? You can still order in and do a virtual get together! You and your co-workers can work out a budget for the food and dine while catching up on the latest happenings in each others’ life. Team members can join from their favourite cafe, order delivery, or cook up a little something special at home. If time is a concern, virtual coffee chats and virtual happy hours are shorter fun options too.

3. Socialize Over Group Chat

Group chat is not just for work. The channel is a great way for teams to stay connected, discuss casual topics like what you are having for lunch, compare notes and share interesting reads. You may even find teammates with common interests that can spin off to something fun outside of work!

4. Messy-desk Faceoff

How does your work desk at home look? Do you keep it as tidy as your previous office desk? Make one of your virtual meets about messy desk faceoff where you let your teammates check out the state of your work desk at home. It is fun and will spark off loads of conversations on work from home tips and how to manage time at home. The activity also provides the opportunity for your forever tidy teammates to do some humble bragging about their clean, neat and Instagram-worthy home working space.

5. Presents For Everyone!

Whether your team prefers casual or something more thoughtful, you can pull off a gift exchange even when you are not physically together. You can do a secret Santa thingy and each team member buys a meaningful gift for someone in the team.

Before the session starts, the gift will be delivered to the respective recipients’ homes. Unwrapping will take place during the virtual call. You and your teammates will get a chance to steal a gift someone else has already claimed to make it more fun! After the game is over, mail the gift to the respective owners.

6. My User Manual

Just like how all our electric appliances come with a user manual, people need to know how each and everyone on the team functions. Do you have a preference between chat or email? Which part of the day are you most productive?

Set up a virtual meeting for everyone to share their “user manuals” and collect these fun decks in a central repository where future team members can access them.

7. Learning Circles

It’s easy to get so caught up in executing on your work that you forget to expand your horizons, especially when working from home with no office banter happening around you. Choose a topic related to your work that you want to learn more about – anything from cybersecurity to leadership styles to trends in recruiting practices – and find colleagues who share that interest. Get together over virtual call to discuss a book or article, or have someone in the group give a short presentation. The best part about learning circles is that you can extend them beyond your immediate team and connect with people across the entire organization.

8. Health Monitor

Health Monitor is an activity that encourages you to examine how you and your team have been working together. Through extensive research, eight attributes of healthy, high-performing teams have been identified. A health monitor is then set as an assessment framework to gauge how the team measures up. The activity prompts teams to self-assess on a regular basis and helps to highlight weaknesses before they turn into major liabilities.

9. Uncover your superpowers

Ready to get to know your teammates really well? We have the activity for you. Each co-worker will prepare for the session by taking an online strength finder assessment such as Clifton Strengths. During the video call, each teammate will take turns to share their top three strengths, lowest-ranked strength, and something in our results that surprised us. Once all the sharing is done, the team will discuss how each teammate’s top strengths contribute to the team already, and how we could make even better use of them.

We hope this list provided you and your team with some fun bonding ideas. It’s time to plan your first session on your own or with happy sparrow and have fun with your co-workers!