What is Virtual Team Building?

Virtual team building is all about enhancing team performance but with the use of a virtual delivery system approach. Look at this as group activities but where the group meetings take place thanks to a conferencing app like Google Meet or Zoom. With so many employees working from home thanks to the pandemic, the general idea is to encourage them to build relationships, communication, as well as boost the morale of everyone. Working from home has been a shock for many, with workers all over the world having their working social life interrupted, leaving them feeling alone. If it wasn't for the pandemic, then we would look at virtual team building purely through the lens of improving performance and thereby increasing profits.

How do you do Team Building Virtually?

The real problem we see with the term "team-building" is that it has become synonymous with rubbish activities designed by some talentless person in HR to enhance team performance by playing retarded and childish games. There's a lot more to team building than just having some puzzles and "fun" games, that end up making everyone's eyes roll. Most workers have enough on their plate to be bothered with yet another ridiculous idea from HR. The blame for this can e placed on ignorance of what the team-building exercises are designed to achieve. They are NOT a fun time for everyone to bond over. What they are is a serious dive into critical elements of team performance. The aim is to develop a clarity of both vision and purpose via role-playing, strategic thinking and new processes. The idea is that at the end of the team building there will be a noticeable and measurable improvement within the teams that took part.

Why is Team Building Important for Remote Teams?

With the sudden and brutal change in the working environment, with so many employees forced to work from home, the remote team-building process has come to the fore, as a method of keeping everyone connected with both informal and formal interactions. many workers are feeling isolated and lonely with the new working setup, and team-building using conference apps can go a long way to help improve, what are essentially mental health problems. In late 2020, during the first phases of a home office, Buffer State of Remote Work carried out a survey which found that a bad life-work balance, as well as loneliness, were by far the two biggest issues affecting home office workers. 

What are the Most Effective Remote Team Building Activities?

That's an interesting question. First, we need to examine what exactly we want our team building to accomplish? We would place the needs and wants of the team members as well as engaging with them in a positive manner. It's hard to express it in more scientific terms as we're dealing with emotions and feeling as well. It's also important that the team itself knows what the team building is trying to achieve. To that end, you must ensure a clear understanding of what's required, where the activity is heading as well as how we'll all get there and what the individual roles are. Essentially we're trying to get teams to work better together in order to achieve common goals. it's important to keep in mind that the team-building exercises should also consider such factors as the different backgrounds, experience, and perspectives as they might then require a different approach or style of exercise. Just make sure that everything is absolutely crystal clear from the outset. When the game is playing, ensure that all the team members have enough time to properly think through the problem or topic. Remember to facilitate dialogue as opposed to forcing it. We suggest that you ways stick with as smaller groups as possible. 

How do you Include Virtual Team Building Activities in Meetings?

It's always important to consider the mental well-being of everyone around us. Remote work isn't for everybody, with many feeling the emotional effects of distnce. So it's important to be aware that there may well be some employees who are feeling less comfortable working around others or being tasked as team leader. That's why we tend to think that rather than focusing on the actual type of team-building, you should be thinking about the results you wish to achieve first. The mechanics can come in second place to the requirements of the exercise itself. Keep in mind that things can actually be much more stressful for those who are working from home. They have to work, whilst at the same time deal with the home-bound children, pets, or a thousand other distractions. It's easy for people to fall into a form of ADD f things are not handled correctly. So you don't want to be adding to an already stressful situation. So please encourage your teams to do a team-building exercise, but only if they can find a quiet space, and then ensure that their webcam is on throughout the whole duration of the team-building session.

What are Virtual Team Building Games, Activities, and Exercises?

These are really any activities which help to build stronger team relationships. You can start with simple ice-breakers to introduce team members to each other. Ask each team member to say something about themselves. About their goals in life. But be sure to only ask things that you are certain people are comfortable talking about. What's important here is that the whole approach needs to be comfortable with zero adversarial effects. We suggest that when dealing with the team members, that you try and utilize tools and methods to engage with them, and make sure that you allow enough room for different preferences and styles.

What do you need for a Virtual Team Building Meeting?

beyond having your team members present, then there's really very little else that's needed. Everyone will need to e on the same video conferencing app, but as far as hardware goes, that's all there is to it. just make sure that you have a clear agenda and understand the different roles in the video meeting as well as any expected outcomes. As the home set-up is very different from the usual office, you can happily and comfortably stray into more personal territory. Things like introducing the kids, or having a walk around the garden are all great activities that you can use without getting too hung o up on the work aspects of the team building excesise.

Virtual Team Building Available Outside the US?

You can really thank the pandemic for the huge increase in interest and use of remote team building. It's a great means of ring everyone together for a commonly shared activity. Whether the teams are in the same country atters, not a jot, as long as they have internet access, then you're all good to go. By delivering to audiences around the globe, team building and interaction will be a huge aid to better communication as well as collaboration. 

Why ExitTheRoom for Virtual Team Building?

ExitTheoom has extensive experience with running team buildings. Being the owners of many real brick and mortar escape rooms, they are fully experiencing from over many years of playing escape room games. Now with the pandemic, the whole business was turned on its head and now they're probably the world's largest purveyor of remote escape room team building games, with plenty of blue-chip companies as loyal customers.