Zoom Team Building Ideas

How to Keep Your Team Connected

As we reach the anniversary of working from home many organizations have adjusted to Zoom calls from their homes. We all know that working remotely is nowhere near the same as working with your team in person. It can be challenging at times to keep the once sought-after company culture that you worked so hard to achieve going strong while remote. We’re breaking down a few ideas that you can implement on your team to keep morale high and your employees feeling connected.

Get to Know Your Team

If you’ve hired anyone during the pandemic or you’ve started a new job during the pandemic you know that it can feel a little strange to never meet your coworkers in person. Plus, you often don’t get the chance to meet people that aren’t in your department since you don’t work with them directly. Schedule some time into weekly team meetings to get to know new team members, and let new team members get to know everyone else. During the scheduled time, use some icebreakers to get people talking, or even separate team members into breakout rooms and have them chat with each other. Here are a couple of examples of icebreaker activities.

Rapid Fire Q&A

This is one that we like to play when we have a new hire! Use the chat function in zoom to have the team ask the person questions, and they have to answer as many as they can without hesitation. This one is a fun way to get to know someone when you only have a few minutes left in the meeting and it generally brings the energy up because employees will find something in common with the new person. Get creative with your questions and let ‘em rip!

Two Truths and a Lie

This one is a classic icebreaker. It’s fun because some interesting facts get shared that wouldn’t normally come up in conversation. First, designate the person that will be sharing two truths and a lie, and have them come up with their responses. When they share their responses, have the rest of the team type their guess of which one is the lie in the Zoom chat. Once everyone has guessed, the designated person will give the correct answer.

Challenges & Games

Challenges and games are a great way to bring the energy up! Employees get to work with people they normally don’t work with, and it brings some friendly competition into play. A couple of games we like to play are…

Scavenger Hunt

Yes, you heard that right! Do a virtual scavenger hunt over Zoom by challenging your employees to find random household items and show them to everyone once they’ve found them. Create a list of fun, random, and unusual items to look for and split your employees into breakout rooms for the challenge. The team that finds everything first and rejoins the Zoom to prove it wins!

Solve Riddles

Not everyone likes riddles, but they certainly get your brain working! Come up with a list of riddles for your employees to solve and split them into breakout rooms so they can work together on the answers. Give them a time limit to solve them and then regroup to see which team got the most answers correct. No Googling!

Drawing Challenge

Let’s face it, most of us do not consider drawing as our top skill. However, this game lets your employees with artistic abilities shine and also provides a good laugh for the employees who might be better at negotiating deals. Give everyone a fun subject to draw and let them have a few minutes to scribble it down. Once everyone has completed their drawings,  regroup and vote on whoever’s was the best. Fun examples of things to draw can be holiday-themed things, fellow employees, or someone’s dream amusement park. Get creative!

Jeopardy or Trivia

Jeopardy and trivia are great ways to get some friendly competition going! Split your team members into groups and play a couple of rounds. Create some questions that pertain to your organization’s work, people on the team, pop culture, history, or random facts. Including some fun questions that pertain to your team can be a fun way to get to know each other and also see who knows the most about your organization.

Class in Session

Designate some time every so often to get your teammates together and learn something new. Send out a questionnaire asking if anyone at your organization would be willing to teach everyone a class on a topic of their choice. For example, yoga or workout class, cooking class, painting class, or a mixology class. This is a fun way to discover the hobbies of your teammates, and for everyone to bond by doing a virtual activity.

Create Committees

Here at Community Boost, we created a few different committees to help employees get involved with a little more than just performing their job description. Decide which committees you want to create, and allow your team to choose which one they’d like to be a part of. Once the committees are created, they can come up with their own goals, tasks, and schedule meetings with each other which results in more collaboration and team bonding. Examples of committees include Culture Committee or Party Planning Committee, Diversity & Inclusion Committee, or Community Impact Committee.

Morning Coffee Dates

We’ve all been drinking our morning coffee alone at our work-from-home desk setups for a while now, so how about we enjoy them with a colleague? Ask your team who would be interested in joining a rotating schedule of “coffee dates” where you randomly pair teammates up. They can schedule a morning that works best for them and discuss whatever they want! Encourage them to chat about career development, hobbies outside of work, any accomplishments, or even challenges they’re facing. For entry-level employees, this can be extremely helpful and ease the awkwardness of wanting to chat with an executive but not knowing how because of remote work. It can create an atmosphere of mentorship, growth, and general comfort as more people get to know each other better.

Keeping your company culture alive while working remotely is both essential and challenging. Sometimes adults are reluctant to play games at work and it may feel a little awkward and forced, but you’ll notice that most employees are in a better mood after participating. Our advice is to designate some time to facilitate one of these activities at your organization’s team-wide meetings on a monthly basis. If you feel the need to do them more often, go right ahead! We’ll leave you with one last pro tip: have someone different facilitate every team-wide meeting and have them start off with some fun facts about themself while you wait for everyone to join.

Karen Vela