team-building

This post will examine the importance of team building and training when groups collaborate remotely and online. We’ll additionally discuss virtual team training exercises you may employ to promote online teamwork.

Thanks to the cloud technology industry’s ongoing evolution, we now have more convenience than ever. Professionals may now operate from anywhere thanks to real-time collaboration capabilities, unlike in the past. Additionally, as the number of remote employees has increased, the demand for virtual team building and training activities has grown.

As a fallout of the COVID-19 global outbreak, many companies now have well-defined policies allowing their teams to work from home to protect their safety and maintain productivity.

team training

However, working remotely is likely to emerge as the default option, given the lack of a foolproof remedy and the fact that social isolation is the sole workable solution. Research shows that 97.6 percent of remote workers would like to work remotely for the rest of their careers at least some of the time. However, a prolonged absence from the typical workplace environment might have a negative impact on your staff.

Your managers must intervene at this point and act to maintain a sense of unity. Virtual team training exercises are the best option for achieving this. Including such pursuits in your regular activities benefits companies in two ways, namely:

  • Fostering stronger bonds between team members in groups that work closely, such as remote software development groups.
  • Keeping staff morale high — to have a positive experience while working remotely and harness the power of teamwork.

Therefore, we have assembled a list of a few top remote team training exercises to assist you. We are confident that all these initiatives can keep your employees connected and experience a boost to their morale.

The Top 10 Virtual Team Training Activities for Remote Workers

Enabling your employees to feel like they are an inevitable part of a unified team during corporate team-building training programs can become more straightforward when you add specific strategic exercises. Consider the 10 ideas listed below for creating a cohesive learning culture in your firm.

Office games online

power of teamwork

Time: between 30 and 60 minutes

Objective: Improve team cooperation when working with distributed teams.

Icebreaker exercises are always necessary for team training exercises. Having all your staff present at the exact location makes conducting such events much more straightforward. Nevertheless, you can continue utilizing a chat group to conduct virtual and friendly matches for your dispersed teams.

We shall make this short and sweet: you may organize a competition out of several different games. Next, create several teams out of your employees depending on the number of your personnel. When forming teams, strive to mix up your workers from different departments. Additionally, ensure that each squad has three to four members.

Make a list of icebreaker games your team can enjoy in digital multiplayer format after forming the groups. Many of these games are now accessible on both desktop and mobile devices. Choose a scoring system where points are given based on the game’s difficulty.

Always remember that each player on your squad should participate in the contest and score points, fostering a competitive spirit and solidifying the bonds among team members.

Health challenges for teams

Time: Between 20 to 30 minutes

Objective: To motivate your remote staff members to lead healthy lifestyles.

The corporate world as a whole has accepted the standard of employee well-being. Nowadays, every company wants to prosper with a happy workforce. And as a result, many people are now putting corporate wellness initiatives into place at the workplace. Things change significantly when it comes to the people of your organization that work remotely.

Associating health issues with your digital team training activity is among the best ways to ensure this happens in this case. How to build and manage your teams was already covered previously. The next phase is to provide your teams with various health difficulties.

Here, you might think about assigning your staff members jobs such as:

  • Performing “X” reps of squats, lunges, and pushups.
  • Running “X” kilometers each week.
  • Completing “X” steps every day.
  • Video chat mindfulness sessions with others to improve mental health.

Deploy a comprehensive wellness platform, which is yet another fantastic option to organize such online worker health challenges.

These platforms enable you to:

  • Make flexible workplace health competitions.
  • Follow the development of the well-being campaign among your staff.
  • Obtain essential data regarding the health of your team.
  • Promote constructive rivalry in the workplace.
  • Reward your best performers for inspiring others.

So you can encourage a healthy staff and gamify your worksite health efforts.

Computerized coffee breaks

team building training

Time: 15 to 30 minutes

Closing the communication barrier between your telecommuters is the primary goal of this team training activity.

Who doesn’t enjoy meeting coworkers for a coffee drink and stimulating conversation? We suppose nobody will object to that!

However, this is nothing less than a treat for your remote teams. Breaks at work are a fantastic method to improve the rapport between your workers. These breaks allow your staff members to decompress and recover with outstanding productivity.

Therefore, you may incorporate online coffee breaks into your distributed team training exercises. You can use a teleconference to conduct these sessions as unofficial staff meetings. And permit your staff members to discuss with a fellow employee any time. Additionally, you can add other entertaining components to enhance these breaks.

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Share the information

Time: 30 to 45 minutes

Objective: Refresh your staff’s way of thinking.

In our opinion, it is among the best-virtualized team training exercises you can provide your workforce, regardless of whether they’re local or not.

The only requirements here seem to be your staff’s willingness to communicate their knowledge of numerous topics with other individuals and their full participation via video conferencing.

You might ask your staff to discuss what they’ll share with their colleagues before starting this activity. Your employee could then be asked to distribute a random selection of the entries with colleagues the following day. Doing so fosters a culture of respect amongst your staff members and encourages them to acquire new experiences.

Conduct research or a treasure hunt

Hand drawn flat design scavenger hunt

Time: 20 to 30 minutes for each team

Building employee trust and confidence is the goal of this virtual team training activity.

Another excellent technique to inform your staff about fascinating but little-known statistics is to conduct a fact-finding exercise. These details could relate to a country, a city, a famous person, a business, or a line of work.

You might instruct your groups to select a location and then research some fascinating lesser-known details about it. Requesting your staff to make a quick presentation and deliver that to their coworkers will liven things up even further.

This is the ideal virtual team training activity because it unites everyone to accomplish a single goal. Your staff will not only learn some new information from this, but they’ll also develop stronger bonds among one another and be more capable of working as a unit with everyone playing a distinct role.

Examine

Time: 20 to 30 minutes

Objective: Promoting a culture of learning among the staff.

The time for absorbing new information is over; it is also time to gauge how much knowledge your staff members possess. All your teams will be challenged to offer their best effort and win anything on the line since this is a fast-paced tournament.

Depending on your preferences, you could prepare a list of questions on various subjects, including business, tech, culture, history, current affairs, and many other topics. Additionally, you can set up a couple of helplines here, such as:

Limiting the number of chances any team can receive assistance from another team to three. Both parties will receive one point when the response is accurate. Sounds intriguing, don’t you think? Consequently, your remote workers will find this battle of wit to be even more entertaining.

Lunchtime meetings

power of teamwork

Time: 45 to 60 minutes

Increasing employee relations is the goal here.

It’s crucial to socialize with coworkers to maintain positive workplace relationships. Heading out to a luncheon with coworkers, which is among the best methods to socialize, is something crucial that your workers lose out on when they function from multiple places.

Nevertheless, you can compensate for this gap by scheduling video conference sessions at lunch. Even if virtual, having your staff sit together for lunch and engage in entertaining conversation or discuss any pressing issues will boost morale. To keep your distant team members feeling connected, set a goal to continue arranging these meetings frequently.

Fix it!

Time: 20 to 45 minutes.

Encouragement of unconventional thinking and idea implementation is the goal.

You must provide space in your plans for any team training program for tasks that require significant thinking.

Nowadays, many workers work directly in front of computers, frequently performing the same boring activities. You can disrupt this cycle by asking them to crack any encryption or tackle any riddle or challenge.

In this case, you can offer each group one complex code and request them to fix it in a set amount of time without having to develop individually tailored tasks for each crew. And as it is clear, the team that solves it first receives the prize.

Create a narrative 

Man hands holding tablet with text tell your story at workplace businessman working at desk with documents

Time: 30 to 60 minutes

Developing a culture of cooperation is the goal.

Humans are incredibly skilled at inventing tales that can astonish anyone, whether they are acquaintances or our human resources managers.

The same might be transformed into an exciting and enjoyable team training activity. You must provide a few simple words that everybody will understand in this situation. Then challenge them to make a story out of those arbitrary terms or phrases. It will be enjoyable, and your staff members will enjoy it as they make others smile with their tales.

Who are you?

Time: 10 to 15 minutes

Ideal for ice-breaking, particularly when integrating new distant team members.

Every single one of your workers is different. And to establish a strong bond with them, it’s crucial to highlight their individuality before everyone else.

You can arrange an online session to motivate your staff to share their experiences. This will increase the self-confidence of your employees, which will benefit you. In addition, it will encourage others to reveal more about themselves. By doing this, you may increase worker trust and elevate the culture of your business.

Conclusion

The biggest problem with working remotely is that employees feel neglected when coworkers and superiors don’t pay attention to them. And thus, it becomes crucial to plan online team-building exercises to keep this under control occasionally.

You may bridge the distance and increase communication between your remote workers using the virtual team training exercises mentioned above. To develop a fun online team-building program, you can choose to organize just one activity or integrate a few.

We would appreciate hearing about any further virtual team-building suggestions you may have in the comment section below.

Ad: PlayAblo’s Enterprise-Grade Micro-Learning platform is built for millennial learners. Micro-Learning, assessments, and gamification features ensure learning outcome measurement and sustained engagement.
Find out more and request a custom demo!