How to Implement a Successful Remote Team Building Strategy

Having a team that is motivated, productive, and enjoys working together is critical to the success of your company. However, team building can be difficult to manage and initiate. This challenge has become more pronounced with the move to a remote work model where employees aren’t interacting in-office. Management, therefore, must be more conscious in their effort to promote a strong team culture.

Despite challenges, remote team building is possible, and there are many tactics you can use to get your team bonding and building relationships. From setting up virtual social events, like happy hours, to encouraging mentorship and joint coffee breaks, you’ll find an array of activities that can help your team build close relationships.  

Read on to understand the benefits remote team building brings and to get some ideas for virtual team building activities.

What is Remote Team Building?

Virtual team building involves connecting remote teams and initiating activities and processes that build bonds and strong relationships among co-workers. Having a remote team building strategy is crucial as without one, your team could lack collaboration skills, and productivity will drop, among other issues. 

Remote team building is more challenging than in-person team building and requires more conscious effort. Virtual team building tactics need to be initiated by management.      

Remote team building allows for strong bonds to be formed, even when your staff don’t meet in person.

Why Remote Team Building is Important

When you have a team that doesn’t have a strong bond, you’ll encounter many issues. These issues include unproductive teamwork and drops in innovation, workplace output, and, ultimately, productivity.

Benefits of Remote Team Building

Remote team building can offer an array of benefits as well as mitigating issues that arise from remote work models. By creating a strong team bond, trust increases, and a friendly work environment with a strong culture is created. 

The following are some more of the main benefits that remote team building tactics bring.

Improved Collaboration and Communication 

Creating a culture where communication and collaboration come easily to all staff is very important. Poor communication and collaboration cause inefficiencies, drops in creativity, and an increase in the time needed to complete tasks. 

It can be more difficult to initiate a culture of communication and collaboration when all staff work remotely. However, there are ways to remedy this issue. 

For example, set up workplace communication platforms and encourage employees to ask each other questions and discuss projects they’re working on. Virtual team building activities can also improve relationships, making collaboration and team work easier and more enjoyable. 

Increased Innovation and Creativity 

When you have strong relationships, and even friendships with coworkers, idea generation comes more naturally. Staff won’t be afraid to voice all their ideas, even if they think the suggestions may not work. 

Employees additionally have more confidence, which allows them to share feedback (positive and constructive) less awkwardly and with less chance of offending other employees. 

Mitigation of Issues with Remote Working

Loneliness, feelings of not fitting into the team, and high-stress levels are some of the primary issues employees encounter with remote working. Virtual team building activities can help mitigate these issues. 

If your entire team begins to build strong bonds due to virtual team bonding activities, they’ll feel more like part of the team, making loneliness and stress during the workday less likely. 

More Engaged Employees 

Team bonding activities that are effective at creating bonds also result in increased employee morale. When morale increases, employee engagement will generally increase too. Engaged employees are happier, more productive, and more loyal to the company. They also burn out less, and you’ll benefit from lower turnover and absenteeism rates. 

Want some more tips on keeping employees engaged and reducing burnout? Read our article on preventing burnout in remote employees.

Team building helps to create trust and mitigates issues relating to working remotely, like loneliness.

Performance and Productivity 

Workflow output will increase, and performance should be at a higher level when your team has a strong bond. Being part of a team that you like and trust and feeling like you’re working together toward one goal will almost always result in employees getting more accomplished and creating more successful productivity. 

Increased Profitability 

Ultimately, the above benefits will all lead to increased profitability. Your employees will be more productive, and increased innovation and idea generation will likely lead to more sales. Drops in absenteeism and turnover will additionally save the company money. 

How Do You Build Teamwork Remotely?

Now that you understand the importance of team building, even when your staff work from home, let’s discuss how to build teamwork remotely and create strong bonds between all members of your team. 

As a manager, you must plan remote team building activities ahead of time and be the one to ensure they take place. You can also ask for suggestions from employees as to what type of activities would work best for them. Be sure to also adjust as you go based on what works well and what doesn’t as much.

Along with the virtual team building activities, discussed below, try to promote the use of video chat as much as possible. Having calls and meetings where coworkers can see each other can increase team bonding more than using messaging software or traditional phone calls.

How Do You Plan Virtual Team Building?

Initiating remote team building doesn’t have to be difficult. As long as you plan and take feedback from your team, setting up virtual team building activities and creating a strong remote team is quite easy.  

When planning, start by coming up with some remote team building ideas. You can generate ideas yourself, ask the team for ideas, or do a combination of the two. 

Once you have a list of ideas, notify your team of when these remote team events will occur. For example, send an email with a schedule of events (happy hour on Friday, team lunch on Wednesday, etc.) You can also use this notification to mention other things you would like the team to do to build a strong remote bond, such as using video calls for internal meetings over traditional calls. 

As you begin initiating activities, get feedback from your team. If they don’t enjoy one type of activity and find it doesn’t help with team building, pushing your staff to keep using this activity could have a negative effect. 

Always get feedback from your team on the effectiveness of different activities you try.

Fun Remote Team Building Activities

Coming up with some remote team bonding ideas  can be challenging. Luckily, you can find an array of remote team building ideas online. 

To help you out, try some of the ideas on this list of fun team building activities you can do remotely. 

Check Ins 

Frequently check in with your team over video to discuss how they’re tasks are going and how they are feeling. Encourage other managers and department heads to do the same. 

Doing scheduled check-ins with teams that work together, such as a morning meeting or start and end of week catch up, helps with team building and allows the whole team to know how each employee is feeling. Other employees can then offer praise and help their colleagues as needed, building a bond.

Virtual Water Cooler Sessions

When working remotely, the spontaneity of office conversations (or “water cooler” conversations) is lost. This is an issue that should be addressed as these types of conversations help build personal bonds and friendships.

Set up weekly or daily water cooler sessions, either via an app, or simply by asking employees to take a break and have a video chat with colleagues at certain times. You should encourage employees to talk about a range of topics, not just about work. 

Internal Mentorships 

Setting up remote internal mentorships can help with team building and employee development. Once you connect an employee to a mentor, encourage frequent check-ins and use of video calls to build a stronger bond. Having one employee help and teach another employee, in itself, will create a bond. 

Virtual Coffee Meetups, Lunches, or Happy Hours

Mimicking in-office social events with virtual alternatives is an ideal remote team building activity. When in-office, employees may stop for their lunch or break together. You also may have run social events like happy hours.

You can still do these things when working remotely. Give employees a ten to 15-minute break a few times a week (if they don’t have this already) to connect with coworkers, have coffee, and chat. Also, encourage employees to do the same at lunch and host weekly or monthly virtual team lunches and happy hours. 

Virtual happy hours or lunches are an ideal way to build bonds within a remote team.

Third-Party Team Building Applications 

You can discover a range of third-party team building apps and plugins that will make forming team bonds easier. These include game, quiz, and ice-breaker plugins. Many of these can be connected to workplace communication platforms, such as Slack, or used on their own. 

Knowing what to talk about with coworkers can be challenging, so apps like these can help break the ice and start a conversation. This is especially an issue for remote workers that have never met the team in person. Therefore, try to invest in this software if you have some new hires. 

Virtual Stand Ups 

Stand-ups are meetings where all of those involved participate standing up. These meetings can help with idea generation and are intended to be kept short. These types of meetings can also take place virtually and are a quick and effective way to start team-building.

These meetings must be held over video call. You can use them as a chance to discuss projects and work tasks, or use them as a purely team building activity. In the latter case, you could discuss any topics, with the goals of learning more about each other and building team bonds. 

Face-to-Face Meetups

Schedule in-person meetups too, if possible. While virtual alternatives work great, nothing replaces face to face communication. If your team works in one central location, pick a destination that everyone can get to easily and have an employee meetup. This event could be a lunch or dinner, happy hour, or other social activity. 

If your team is more geographically spread out, try to plan a once or twice a year meetup, such as an employee retreat. 

Check out our article on managing remote employees if you need some more ideas for keeping your team happy and motivated. 

In Conclusion

Team building activities are crucial to team success and are even more significant when your team works remotely. Luckily, remote team building doesn’t have to be a challenge, even though it is a bit more difficult than doing so in-office.

The above suggestions for virtual team building should help you get started in generating a strong and successful team bonding strategy. Of course, always discuss ideas with employees to see what will work best for them.