Team Building ideas when not in the same office or even the same country

[ForTheLoveOfGrace]

Any ideas gratefully received. You manage a team who are dotted around the country and some in India so, you're not in the office together often at all.

You've to do a team building exercise so that the new team can get to know each other what do you do? Quiz? But isn't everyone feed up if those after lockdown? 🤔

Family fortunes?
"We asked 100 people to name something Red...." etc
Bit more lighthearted than a true quiz

Ooh I like that 👍🏻

My team did one of those online guess the location games.
Think it was virtual.vacation.us although geoguessr.com is similar

I mean, making them do a Zoom quiz would probably be team-building in the sense of uniting them against you in their dismay!

What kind of team working skills/dynamic do you need to build?

You can do escape rooms online - might be a bit too long for what you need, though.

Second the online escape rooms. We did them for Xmas during Covid and was good fun

Slack. And have a picture/banter channel. Encourage sharing pics of pets etc.

skribbl.io/ doesn't teach you much about each other, but it's great fun to play as a team remotely. Hilarious, winner with my teams.

Be creative, be open, lead by example with openness and sharing.

I encourage 'fun and laughter' on Slack while we work. We post memes etc. They get a vibe. It works very well.

Brilliant! Thank you all.

Yes my thoughts exactly @swanling so definitely wanted some other ideas just hard to think of things with some aboard.

It's a new team all about getting to know each other so these ideas are perfect. Fun and laughter is key for sure!

Scavenger hunt. First person to come back to their screens wearing a hat. First person to find an item of food beginning with the first letter of your name. A cuddly toy, something you can't live without, a favourite photo

Ooh thank you, great idea

We use our daily stand ups as more of a personal catch up. The focus always starts with what people are doing/what’s going on (that they’re happy to share) and people are good at remembering and asking the next day ‘did your neighbours have their scaffolding taken down?’ and such like.

It does help to just get to know each other a bit despite some of us always being remote.

And without needing to do anything team building like.

In contrast, the weekly meetings of the wider group always begins with some torturous waste of time ‘ice breaker’ activity. No one enjoys having to figure out what kind of dog breed they’d be at the start of a whole group meeting. Even worse if whoever is leading is picks out their contribution and asks why.

I did a murder mystery over Zoom, which worked pretty well

Love these. Thank you all.