Building a strong team is challenging. And you’re right—building a team at a distance is far more challenging. The fact is that it might be difficult to bring together people who work remotely so that they can interact with one another and engage on a personal level. There is no better way to distract skeptical team members who claim to have “other things to do” than to have them spend several more hours participating in a virtual happy hour and online team building activities.
The value of establishing a strong team is common knowledge at this point. It enhances communication, provides chances to create trust, and contributes to an improvement in teams’ levels of productivity. But how can you decide on and successfully carry out online team building activities when everyone is working remotely?
In periods before the widespread use of virtual technology, traditional methods of establishing teams would have included taking a day off work or attending a large off-site event that allowed for a significant amount of face-to-face interaction and collaboration. When you remove that physical component, there is therefore less opportunity for the kind of casual, in-person camaraderie that is necessary for increasing the level of team engagement.
We have compiled a list of the most frequent mistakes associated with online team building activities to assist you in avoiding these pitfalls and developing effective online team building activities so that you may overcome these obstacles.
Deciding on a Pursuit That Calls on One’s Unique Abilities or Capabilities
We’ve all been there—participating in online team building activities that focuses mostly on the abilities of a select few team members while leaving practically everyone else out of the experience (ahem, karaoke).
Some people find them to be excruciatingly dull, while others find them to be a source of worry. Both groups, however, find them to be great in their own right. Especially in the event that events of this kind constitute a significant portion of the overall experience of online team building activities.
A Low Number of Attendees and/or Participants
If you wait until the last minute to send out the invitation or choose a work-related activity that is not very engaging, there is a good probability that you will have a lower level of engagement and/or attendance than you would prefer. A productive online team building activities in team building needs participation from every member of the team, not just the most enthusiastic handful.
Problems With Technology for the Hosts and/or the Attendees
Even though distributed teams use a variety of technology platforms during the course of the workday, a technical issue is often always just around the horizon. Technical difficulties, despite their often insignificant nature, may result in frustrating delays and a generally unpleasant experience.
Refusing To Disseminate Any Documents and Resources in Advance
Before an event, the organisers are often preoccupied with the logistics of the online team building activities, rather than ensuring that all members of the team have all they need to participate to the fullest extent possible.
It is imperative that everyone has everything prepared well in advance of the start of the online team building activities, whether it be a specific piece of software, a costume, painting materials, or kitchen supplies. If you don’t provide them with the appropriate tools and resources, they will most likely spend more time on their phone, or even worse, they won’t show up at all.
Maintaining the Status Quo in Terms of the Physical Environment
The opportunity to go away from the workplace for a morning or afternoon and concentrate only on the task at hand is one of the advantages of participating in traditional team-building exercises. It goes without saying that this is going to be more difficult for online team building activities.
If they take part in the event from the same location from where they conduct their daily virtual meetings, it won’t seem like much of a break at all; rather, it will feel like an obliged continuation of their workweek.