15 Virtual Team Building Activities for Remote Web Hosting Companies

Teambuilding is an important for any company. This allows it to increase its power, productivity, and team spirit. It is necessary to work on team-building not only in an office environment but also in remote collaboration. According to Buffer research, in 2020, about 20% of remote workers faced the problem of loneliness, in 2021 their number dropped to 13%, but this remains one of the main problems of working from home.

Many are trying to overshadow virtual team building falsely believing that it does not work in such conditions. Perhaps this is due to ignorance of how to implement it. Today we will tell you all about virtual team building for the best remote web hosting companies and help you create your own rallying and employee engagement program.

What is virtual team building?

The concept of virtual team building includes all means aimed at uniting team members or the entire company. With its help, each employee will feel that he is appreciated and considered a part of a large organism, without which the latter cannot exist.

Cohesion tools can be office games, strategies, events, video exercises, and more.

Why is team building so important?

Team building in a remote work environment solves several problems at once:

• eliminates the problem of the feeling of loneliness among employees;
• motivates to improve productivity;
• increases the self-esteem of employees and a sense of importance;
• allows to unite and make friends the team, directing to communicate with each other;
• helps those who are not used to working remotely to adapt.

Don’t rely on teambuilding as a one-off activity or task that needs to be done once a year. It should become an ongoing tool that you use on a daily basis in your company. Allow employees to chat with each other and relax during the day at specific times. Then you will understand how much it will improve their performance.

Best Team Building Tactics

We offer three main tactics for implementing team building.

Begin any conversation with lyrics

When organizing an online meeting with your employees, start with a lyrical digression that isn’t work-related. This will allow the attendees to relax a little and take the meeting in a more optimistic way. Plus, you allow workers to have a little chat with each other, which they cannot do during the workday.

Hire a Team Building Specialist

If you do not know how to properly organize team-building – find the appropriate specialist. He will help you interact with your team and help you to bring it together. A professional will approach the issue more carefully and select the ideal model specifically for each team.

Get creative

If you decide to take the initiative into your own hands, remember that all the tips that we will analyze are templates. Use them to create your own team-building approaches. Get creative and have fun creating team-building events. Make sure you like them personally, and then the team will like them.

15 best ways to create virtual team building

Here are just 15 of the most popular ways to create virtual team building for remote web hosting companies. In fact, there are many times more of them, and for each of them, you can give something new that will be adapted specifically for your team.

1. Virtual Vacation

There are no boundaries on a virtual vacation. For example, you can ask the whole team to dress in Hawaiian shirts, make your favorite cocktail, and complete several tasks: create a unique ship flag on which you all go on a journey to the islands, schedule a route, go in search of treasures or household rubbish.

Organize all this during an online meeting in an informal setting. Each employee should take an active part in the virtual vacation and express their ideas.

The method is aimed at collective communication and the development of creative ideas. In such a fun environment, you can also complete work tasks.

2. Bonfire

Tiny campfire invites all employees to gather around the fire without leaving their computer screens. A virtual mini-fire will allow all participants in the action to unite, tell interesting stories, horror stories, or even arrange competitions. The service sends small candles and some ingredients for the event to all participants in advance.

The method creates a unique online camping experience where all participants can get to know each other better, create amazing memories and recharge with a great mood.

3. Tea vs coffee

The “tea vs coffee” event is an online tasting of different types of drinks. Its essence is that each participant receives 4 different types of coffee and tea by mail a week before the meeting. All packages are securely sealed to preserve intrigue. When the event kicks off, a friendly barista will connect to the video cafe. He will tell interesting stories about drinks, offer to play games, and give a tasting.

The method will expand your horizons, amuse and unite the whole team.

4. War of wizards

One of the most fun and popular team-building events in the world is War of the Wizards. This is a whole game of 90 minutes duration. It combines puzzles, quest rooms, role-playing games, and exciting stories. Each of the online hosting employees will become a henchman of a wizard who was previously a participant in the hostilities. You will have to continue the battle and receive “spark points” for each completed stage. In the course of actions, you need to cast spells and make every effort so that the outcome of the war is peace.

The method will allow you to unite the team, test the knowledge of the participants and have fun. War of the Wizards offers many challenge options depending on the difficulty level and interests of the team.

5. Pixel art table

We all know Google Sheets, but few people know that it is a great platform for team building. Some will be interested in developing complex tables and graphs, and some will be interested in drawing pixel art.

For Spreadsheet Pixel Art, you need to add a little code that will replace the fill color of a specific cell. This can be used to create absolutely any kind of drawing.

The method should be organized in the form of a competition. It will allow you to strengthen the team spirit, develop a creative approach to problem-solving and relax from everyday work.

6. Werewolf

The werewolf game is very popular, it can be played not only online, but also offline. The game will require ingenuity, a little manipulation and a pinch of lies. Organize it into Zoom and use random character generation by sending each player their role in the game with a personal message. The host can also do this. There are 4 roles in total:

• werewolf – eats peasants;
• peasant – votes for who can be a werewolf;
• medic – can heal from death;
• seer – reveals the identity of the werewolf.

Only peasants can be any number, werewolves – two, and the representative of other characters is exclusively one player. After the roles have been assigned, night falls. All players close their eyes and make various sounds, such as drumming.

The presenter asks the werewolves to wake up and choose one victim, and then go to sleep again. Then the medic opens his eyes and chooses the participant he wants to heal, and then he also falls asleep. After the seer wakes up and points to the alleged werewolf, the presenter is obliged to nod and confirm / not confirm his guesses.

Then morning comes, the presenter announces who the werewolves ate. If a medic saved him, he continues to play, if not, he is eliminated. Survivors must choose one player that they believe is a werewolf. If they guessed right, the peasants won, if not, the game continues until only werewolves or only peasants remain.

This method is very interesting for everyone – young and old, it helps to make the team friends and relax in a pleasant atmosphere.

7. Whose office is this?

At your next online meeting, invite your colleagues to play a game. Everyone should take a photo of their desktop. Ask to leave the “home office” as it is right now. This will allow you to get to know the person better. Then all photos must be sent to you.

Include each photo and ask the team to guess who owns the job shown in the photo.

The method will allow you to introduce a new team to each other, and for those who have been working for a long time, it is a great way to relax and have fun, as well as get to know your colleagues better.

8. Typing Speed Race

The free typing speed test service allows you to dive into the exciting wave of competition in your “remote office”. Start with yourself, take the test online, for example, at TypingTest and share your results in the general chat. Offer to follow your example and check who is cooler.

The competition will quickly capture the team, you will be able to please the best players and raise their team spirit.

You can also test your typing speed at an online meeting and make a competition for the whole company so that several people form their own team and fight in whole squads.

Make sure everyone is using the same service to take the test.

The method will be an excellent charge of positive emotions and will unite the teams.

9. Quarterly Christmas

Every year we look forward to Christmas. Many people start the countdown right after the end of the holiday. We suggest not to wait so long, but to give it quarterly. It can be either a thematic online corporate event or sending small surprises by mail to all employees.

Surprise gifts can be inexpensive, such as chocolate, wine, coffee or tea, and gift certificates for courses. All you need to do is budget around $ 25 per person + shipping and your employees at remote web hosting companies will be happy.

The method will dilute the gray workdays, give a feeling of joy and importance to each participant.

10. “Can you hear me?”

One of the best online team-building games is “Can you hear me?”. For it, you need to create a virtual conference room, appoint one specialist as a speaker, and the rest as artists.

The speaker must find a random image that he can generate on the service and then describe it as colorfully and understandably as possible so that artists can draw it.

The main task is to describe the picture using geometric shapes. It is important to find a speaker with accurate communication skills.

The method will improve the quality of communication between team members, they will understand each other better, which will help in the future, and will also simply cheer themselves up.

11. Guess the emoji board

Until recently, emoticons were just a quirky and fun part of Internet communication, but today they are even used in emails for business partners, clients and colleagues.

Almost every employee of a remote web hosting company uses interesting emojis in their daily life, and each has a category of the most popular ones. With their help, you can play a fun game. It is enough to ask each employee to take a screenshot of a mobile device or computer desktop screen and send it to the presenter. By analyzing the collected screenshots, the presenter can create an interactive game where employees match the popular emojis with their respective categories, fostering team bonding and a fun work environment.

Next, create a list of players and attach anonymous screenshots of the most popular employee snapshots. Ask each participant within 5 minutes to guess who uses which emoticons most often. For each correct answer, you can add points and give the most discerning one a small gift.

The method can become a part of one of the videoconferences, this is a quick game aimed at team building and a short relaxation during the working day.

12. Acquaintance in the style of MTV

Perhaps your remote employees will never see each other in person. But this does not prevent them from opening up, showing their personal space, making friends and having fun in the MTV style.

You can ask your team to check out MTV Cribs and make their own short ’90s TV show-style corporate videos. The idea is to show colleagues your home, and thus give them the opportunity to get to know themselves better.

The method will allow the members of the virtual team to get closer to each other.

13. Petri

The Petri service allows you to create a whole calendar of team-building events. It is enough to select a game or event, add them to the calendar and it will automatically inform all participants about the upcoming event. The service provides data based on the time zones of the remote employees of the web hosting team. With it, you won’t have to worry about planning.

The method will inform all participants about the events of the company, and give them the opportunity to prepare for them in advance.

14. Online dance party

A quick and fun way to get a team together is to have a party. And if it is complemented by dancing, it will be even more interesting. The format can be different, you can arrange a long-themed event or organize a 10-minute party during a video conference.

The main task is to give free rein to emotions and move as the heart tells. Let go of the awkwardness and allow employees to open up and have fun.

The method will allow you to recharge with energy, let off steam, and rally the team.

15. Pancakes vs waffles

An excellent collective game “Pancakes vs. Waffles” will allow each participant to open up. The main goal is to leave only one thing on the planet, or waffles, or pancakes. Each employee must make his own choice and give reasons for it. You can have a whole debate so that everyone learns to defend their opinion.

After choosing the winner, the next competitor must enter the game, for example, “Waffles against puppies” or “pancakes against kittens” and so on. The longer the game is, the more interesting it is.

The method will allow to unite the team, get to know each other better and find friends based on common interests.

Conclusion

According to research around 65% of telecommuting employees reported never participating in a team-building event. These statistics only indicate that company leaders are not ready to work on team building. In fact, it is a must for improving levels of productivity and building healthy team relationships.

With the following 15 ways to organize team building for remote workers, you can easily organize the system. This does not require a lot of resources and time. Pick just a couple of ways, implement them and see how positively they affect your work. Also ask the participants of the events themselves how much they liked them, which caused positive emotions, and which negative ones. When you analyze the results, you yourself will be motivated to implement more teambuilding tools in your company.

Nikunj Dudhat

A digital marketing and content curator at SoftwareSuggest, a software recommendation platform. I am passionate about Digital Marketing, and all things digital. Also interested in technology and innovation. In my spare time, enjoy playing cricket, and Badminton.