In the current climate, more companies than ever are having to adjust to remote working, whether that’s for some employees or all. Without frequent visibility and social connection at the office, it has become much tougher to keep employees engaged and happy whilst working from home.
Keeping your remote teams engaged can bring huge benefits to your company, such as increased productivity, increased collaboration, and an overall improvement in employee morale.
One of the most difficult, yet most important parts of keeping your remote teams engaged is social interaction. That’s why we have compiled a list of 20 employee engagement activities for remote teams. We hope it inspires you!
Best team building activities for remote employees
Home tours
Bring your colleagues into your home… now there’s an interesting idea, right?
Some people may not be comfortable with this, but those who are will love this remote team building activity. Virtual home tours can give your employees the opportunity to bond with each other and chat in a way that they might not normally do so.
During a video call, ask your employees (who want to participate) to give a virtual tour of their home, or maybe just their office or room of choice. You could also do a variation of this, or turn this idea into a game – ask each employee to send in a picture of a room, then ask the other employees to guess who’s house they think they’re looking at.
Virtual book club
Virtual book clubs are a great way for your employees to get together and discuss a different book each week, or fortnight.
This activity is double-sided, in that it encourages your employees to engage in a healthy activity outside of work and it also has a social element too. The combination of bringing your employees together in an informal setting and enabling the team to read more will promote social and personal development, leading to your employees feeling enriched and engaged.
Multiplayer games
Inviting your employees to play multiplayer games can give them a chance to relax and unwind, whilst also getting to know their colleagues better.
Allowing them to take a bit of time away from work to play a game with a colleague will not only lead to more social time for your team but it will also lead to better productivity with small breaks being proven to increase productivity.
Multiplayer games are versatile enough that everyone can get involved, meaning that more of your remote employees are likely to get involved. These games could change every week, sports games, quizzes, trivia, communication games – you could even give out prizes to incentivise even more people to participate.
Homemade cake competition
In the age of ‘The Great British Bake Off’, who hasn’t been inspired to try baking some tasty treats. Why not turn their love of baking into a remote team building activity?
Each week or month, you could select a different type of bake and see which of your employees produces the best-looking bake.
This could be judged each time by a specially selected panel, with the overall winner of the competition earning a prize.
This will courage your employees to put down the laptop, step away from their screens in the evening and do something fun. Creating a good work life balance , resulting in your employees being well rested and ready for their work each day.
Vary in-house and at-home working
Adopting a hybrid work schedule can be great to keep your remote employees engaged. Having set days each week/month in which employees can work from your office will help prevent work from home fatigue.
Trips into the office will break up the somewhat monotonous world of working from home – your employees will get time face-to-face with their colleagues, which can be beneficial on both a personal and professional level.
Personally, your employees will benefit from the social aspect associated with being in the office and the routine of commuting and leaving the house.
Professionally, it is also great as your employees will be able to easily collaborate on projects with their colleagues in a way that may be difficult to achieve remotely. Leading to increased productivity and efficiency when working on certain tasks.
Get furry friends involved
I’m sure I can speak for many of us when I say, one of the best things to come from the age of remote working, is the fact that you get to see all your colleagues’ pets during video calls.
You could go one step further than this and encourage people to share their pets more often – perhaps a video call which welcomes anyone with pets to show them off. Or competitions such as ‘pets do the funniest things’; in which people could share videos/photos of their pets who have got themselves into some rather hilarious situations.
Remote employees knowing that their company and colleagues are interested in their pets and home life, helps them to feel valued on a personal level. Also, nothing gives people a quick shot of serotonin than seeing a cute pictures of pets.
Fun incentives
Providing your remote employees with fun incentives is the perfect activity to keep them engaged. An employee who feels like they are well rewarded and incentivised for their hard work and commitment will perform better.
This will of course depend on funding available for such incentives, but it doesn’t need to be high budget. Some ideas could include:
- Prizes for winning or placing in company competitions
- Employee of the month
- Monthly/quarterly pizza night
- Ability to win/earn an extra day of annual leave
Virtual pub crawl
We suggest that this activity takes place outside of working hours for obvious reasons, but it can be a great way to get remote employees involved in after work socials.
One of the main ways that office workers bond is through after work drinks and social events. Whilst these are much harder to do with remote teams, it’s important not to lose this aspect of working life as it is really important for employee engagement.
You can easily set up a virtual pub crawl – ask your employees to stock up beforehand on their drink of choice (it doesn’t have to be alcoholic!) and put someone in charge of creating the virtual pub crawl map. The pub crawl leader can then change their teams background throughout the social, and may even have different team building activities prepared for each location. A further incentive could be to provide your employees with a voucher, or some money towards food and drink for the pub crawl.
This is a fun activity to keep your remote teams engaged with the company and keep the company social culture alive.
Weekly cook-alongs
Weekly cook along sessions are a great way to get all employees involved in a relaxed and fun way, allowing them to learn and relax with their colleagues, and make some (hopefully) delicious food.
Each cook along could be hosted by a different employee, providing them a chance to show off their signature dish. A few days prior, the employee hosting the next cook along should share an ingredient and utensil list, and then on the day all their colleagues would need to do is follow along.
If budget allows, and as a further incentive, you may instead choose to have these sessions hosted by a local chef – so your employees could learn from the very best!
Invest in their home office space
Investing some funds into your employee’s home offices can be very beneficial for employee engagement. Office workers often become accustomed to several things in their working set up, be that desk, chair, footrest, or other office comforts.
Remote working has left many people without these things, and they may be struggling with their work from home set up. Allocating funds to each employee will allow them to be more comfortable in their home office and feel more encouraged to work hard.
Your employees will feel encouraged and looked after by this gesture, which will in turn increase engagement.
Ask for feedback
A sure-fire way to ensure employee engagement remotely is by asking your teams for feedback. Employees feeling like their opinions and feedback is valued, will keep them engaged and interested in what is going on.
Often, when working remotely it can feel like the company moves along without you, and your opinion may not matter, which can result in employees feeling despondent and unengaged. We of course don’t want this, and making employees feel valued and important can be vital for improving engagement.
You can ask for feedback on anything from:
- Social team activities
- Concerns or questions on any ongoing task or project
- Ways existing processes can be improved
- Level of support received whilst remote working
If you do collect feedback from your remote employees, make sure that you show that you care about their feedback. Sharing regular updates on how their feedback is being acted on and implemented can build more trust and show employees how important this feedback can be.
Frequent weekly catch-ups
Setting aside time for frequent weekly catch-ups with your remote employees can be great for increasing engagement and ensuring that they feel seen and heard.
These catch ups could maybe split in half, one half to talk about work and the other to have a general chat. This is beneficial as it allows you to get to know your employees on a personal level, whilst also discussing work – it’s the combination of both these elements that will help you manage or work with them even better.
Talk about life both outside and inside work – your employees will feel valued and respected if their employer is taking an interest in them and will feel more motivated and happier at work.
Encourage flexible schedules
Empowering your employees to manage their own schedules will automatically lead to an improvement in engagement as it helps to build trust and mutual respect.
As long as your employees are still getting their work done on time and to the standard expected and are still able to effectively collaborate with their colleagues – the freedom to choose their own schedule and working hours.
In order to make sure effective collaboration still occurs, it could be a good idea to set times specifically for teamwork – within these times, all employees should be online and available.
At home activity packs
Just because your employees are working remotely, doesn’t mean that all of the employee engagement activities need to be virtual – who’d have thought it!
A great idea for increasing employee engagement is to send you remote employees activity packs. Getting them away from their screen a having fun with some other activities can help them to think more creatively and come back to their computers fresh.
Again, this can be turned into a competition – say for example, one of the activities is a craft project, you could ask all employees to send in a picture of their creation and award prizes to the winners and runners up. Prizes always incentivise employees to take part in these activities and will increase engagement in turn.
Company-wide competitions
Running large company-wide competitions is a great idea for employee engagement. Opening up competitions to all global offices and teams can help to boost teamwork and relationship building throughout the company.
With remote working, it can be easy to feel siloed – so these sorts of large competitions are great to remind employees of the wider company they are a part of and get them engaging with even more people who they may not normally speak with.
The prizes that can be won will also further incentivise your employees to get involved and work hard – remember, valued employees are happy employees!
Virtual coffee breaks
For many of us, a strong coffee is part of our daily routine – so why not turn this into a social event, and a chance for people to share this part of the day, much like you would first thing in the office when everyone gathers to make their morning coffee.
Even a short 15 minute catch up in the morning a couple of times a week, can allow your employees to build on relationships and get their day off to a good start.
Introducing things like this can help employees adjust to remote working more easily – having a feel of ‘normality’ and starting your day off with a coffee and small-talk with colleagues as you would in the office can be great to improve employee engagement, happiness and motivation.
Weekly virtual workouts
Set up virtual workouts for your employees on a weekly basis. Varying the workout each week or having a selection of different workout options each week will increase attendance as it will cater to more abilities and age groups.
Leading a healthy and active lifestyle is key for people’s overall wellbeing, both at work and in your personal life. Remote working can be a distraction from a healthy lifestyle, with some people actually leading an unhealthier lifestyle whilst working from home. Encouraging your employees to get active with weekly workouts will help to re-establish a healthy lifestyle and have them feeling better than ever!
For employees, having these services on offer will increase engagement as they will feel like your company is looking after them and their wellbeing. This will be beneficial for employees as it will allow them to have a break from work and improve their overall health.
Show and tell calls
Show and tell might initially make us feel like we’re back at school, but it can actually be a great way to get to know your remote employees and colleagues in a way that you might not normally – even if you saw them every day at the office.
Schedule a virtual ‘show and tell’ and ask your employees to each share something interesting. This could be anything they wanted, a pet, a skill, their latest gadget or maybe even their favourite outfit – there are so many possibilities.
Again, your employees will feel more willing to engage if they feel like their company and colleagues are interested in them and cares enough to organise fun events like this.
Connect different company departments
For remote employees, it can often feel like you work with the same small group of people day in, day out. When in the office, it is normal to meet and speak with people from different departments and teams more regularly – just because you see them around the office and are likely to stop for a chat. At home of course, this is highly unlikely to happen, we hope… that is why it’s a good idea to schedule in time for your employees to meet with other departments or teams.
These meetings can be done in a formal or informal setting, it is a good idea to set up some meetings between teams on a relatively regular basis (perhaps one department per month) so employees can get to know each other better and gain some insight into their department, responsibilities and current projects.
Keep that Friday feeling!
Just because you’re working from home, doesn’t mean that Fridays should be any less exciting! Reaching the end of a tough week should always be celebrated and rewarded in some way.
How about a fun team catch-up, after work ‘remote’ drinks, a Friday quiz… the choices are endless. (You could use some of the other activities we have spoken about in this article for your Friday activity)
Your employees feeling rewarded and happy after a long week at work can improve their weekends and leave them more inspired and ready to go for the next week of work. Keeping your employees happy and motivated is key to increasing engagement!
3 tips for making remote employee activities happen
It can seem like a big task to introduce new social activities to large groups of people, so in order to make it more achievable, we suggest:
- Introduce activities within smaller teams or departments first, to test the idea
- Consider putting together a social committee, with representatives from as many areas of the business as possible, to share any organisational load
- Plan a calendar of events around key celebrations, like International Happiness at Work Week, spaced throughout the year in order to make the biggest impact.
So there you have it. A list of ideas to keep remote employees engaged and encourage team bonding. Take a look through them and let us know what you think. If you have any additional ideas then feel free to get in touch through social media.
