Team Building Strategy for Your Remote Team‍

Team building has always been an integral part of building positive company culture within an organization. However, team-building activities can be quite difficult to organize when you are working with a partially or entirely remote team.

That being said, there are still ways you can encourage teamwork and collaboration between your employees, even if everyone is working remotely. Hence, here’s how you can create your own team-building strategy for your remote team.

#1 Analyze, Research, and Prepare

First and foremost, you need to analyze your current team dynamics and the state of your remote team at the moment. By understanding how close your employees already are, you can better decide what you should do to improve their dynamics. After that, you will need to do some research about managing remote teams and apply it to your own industry.

For example, if your team specializes in properties for sale in Sydney, you will need to understand the nature of your employees’ work in the context of a remote setup. Nevertheless, some practices for remote team building are quite universal and will work well for any kind of team. For instance, you might want to pair employees who don’t know much about each other so that they can get to know one another better.

#2 Recognize and Reward Employees

Recognizing and rewarding employees might not be the first thing that comes to your mind when you think about team building, but this is actually quite important for company culture. When your employees are rewarded for their hard work, they feel valued and more satisfied with their work. As a result, they will be more open toward one another and more likely to befriend each other.

Recognizing and rewarding employees can be different based on your situation (i.e. size of your team, the scale of your company, etc.) Rewards like gift cards, bonuses, and extra vacation days are all great, but even simple emails of recognition can be a good starting point. If you don’t know how to write such emails, you can always hire a professional writer from the custom writing reviews site Best Writers Online to help you write them.

#3 Organize Workout Sessions

So, which group activities are the best for team building? There are actually quite a few options to choose from. Some of these are great specifically for team building while others can also help you improve employee physical and mental health which is also important for your team.

One of the best activities you can do is organizing workout sessions. Remote teams have breaks throughout the day just like in-office teams do, so it’s a good idea to have one break dedicated to a workout. You can even organize a triathlon training program and engage employees to take part to stay active and maintain a healthy work-life balance. This will ensure that your employees maintain good physical health. If you have a video call together while working out, a session like that can also help you build team spirit and let your employees interact while exercising.

#4 Eat Together During Breaks

Besides a workout break, there will be at least a single break for eating. Breaks for snacking or lunchtime are perfect for employees to interact and get to know each other better. Just like workout sessions, these can be organized in a video call so that everyone can eat while chatting.

In a way, having a video call while snacking or eating creates a simulation of the water cooler chat. But instead of going to the cooler in the office and physically being there, your team members will be seeing each other in a virtual space, a video call. Obviously, it’s not the same, but it is as close as it can get in your setup.

#5 Do Tests and Discuss Results

One of the best ways for you to get to know your employees and for them to get to know each other is by doing tests and quizzes and then discussing the results. This is more of a fun activity that can be done during leisure time when the atmosphere is more casual.

Personality tests are particularly fun for this. Perhaps the most popular one of these right now is MBTI, so you can start from that one. You can also complete quizzes based on common interests (e.g. Harry Potter quizzes). If you run out of such tests, you can hire a writer from the writing services reviews site Writing Judge to make some more for you.

#6 Host Virtual Company Events

Depending on whether your team is partially or entirely remote, you might be seeing your team members online either all the time or most of the time. In both cases, you can regularly host virtual company events such as product launches, milestone celebrations, and anything else you decide to organize.

Just like in-person events, virtual events are perfect for employees to get to know one another and have fun together. Atmosphere of holiday using different additional elements like bright colors, glitter backgrounds, happiness and other ways will be in the great need for this. That being said, if you can, you should still try to organize offline events that everyone can attend. Unfortunately, this is usually only possible for partially remote teams where all members are located within a specific area rather than worldwide.

#7 Train Employees Remotely

It goes without saying that you will need to train incoming employees after the onboarding process so that they can join your team with no issues. However, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t train them later on. In fact, organizing regular training sessions, seminars, team business news reviewing and discussing and workshops is crucial for your employees to upgrade their skills and qualifications.

That’s why training employees remotely can be another opportunity for your to practice team building. A virtual workshop can encourage your team members to work on a mini assignment together that is not directly related to their job. It’s similar to working on an actual project, but on a much smaller scale and in a casual atmosphere.

#8 Engage in Hobbies Together

Hobbies are everyone’s favorite activities, so why not share your love for them with others? Engaging in hobbies together through a video call can be a fun team-building activity and a way for your team members to find new passions. Here are some common ways to organize such hobbies for remote teams:

·         Have a weekly or monthly book club where team members can decide what to read and discuss it together.

·         Organize virtual movie nights at the end of the working week through Discord.

·         Let employees host workshops through a video call where they teach others how to do their favorite activities such as cooking, carpentry, knitting, origami, etc.

·         Play online games together both in teams and against each other to encourage healthy competition.

·         Get creative during DIY sessions by customizing your own clothes, crafting handmade home décor, etc.

#9 Consider Outsourcing Some Tasks

One of the reasons why your team members aren’t very close to each other could be that they are simply too preoccupied with work. In fact, you might not even realize it, but your employees could be seriously stressed out, exhausted, and even overworked. Burnout can happen even to remote employees, so it’s important to recognize it when it happens.

This is exactly why you need to consider outsourcing some of the tasks to make it easier for your employees to get through their responsibilities. For example, you can hire freelance writers from the writing services reviews site Trust My Paper to perform some of the writing tasks such as content creation.

By outsourcing, you are both reducing the workload and letting your employees get more time to rest. Rested employees will be more satisfied with their jobs and more likely to interact with each other during breaks.

#10 Always Keep Looking for New Solutions

Last but not least, don’t forget to always keep looking for new solutions to bring your employees together. There are virtually endless opportunities for team building. Here are just some interesting ideas you can try:

·         Organize virtual meditation sessions to improve employees’ mental health.

·         Share daily snapshots in the casual channel for chatting (e.g. photos of meals, the weather outside, pets, etc.)

·         Keep a video call up throughout the entire working day or let one of the employees host a live stream while others tune in.

Final Thoughts

All in all, remote teams can still be very collaborative and can still find ways to work together effectively. By organizing different team-building activities, you can encourage your employees to be friendlier with one another and find ways to maximize the results of their efforts by working in a team.

Biography

Anna likes writing from her university years. When she graduated from the Interpreters Department, she realized that translation was not so interesting, as writing was. She trains her skills now working as a freelance writer on different topics at writing service review website Best Writers Online to assist a lot of students all over the world. Always she does her best in the posts and articles.