Category: General

We try to write at least one useful blog post every week. One of the hardest parts of doing so, each and every time, is deciding on the title for the new post. The title gives us the focus that allows us to create the new entry. Often, the ideas just flow once we have a title. So when we came up with the idea that team building activities for work should be the focus, we’ll admit it didn’t, for once, make it easier. But why should that be the case? We know that people often use those very words when they go looking for online team building options.

At face value, our five-word title surely has two words more than it needs. The last two words, for work, seem superfluous. Unnecessary even. Why else would you need any team building activities if not for work? The answer is one word. Gaming.

Gaming

Many games these days are multi-player. For example, Call of Duty is a game that most devotees will tell you is a team game. And so if you want to play it and don’t have a team, you’ll need to find one that someone is building. Or build a team yourself. A Call of Duty team. Or a Minecraft team. Or a Grand Theft Auto Online team.

Anyone looking for team building activities for work may well find all five words important. The last two words help avoid finding too many options that are unsuitable for their work teams. But to us, those extra two words imply something more. Something deeper.

Real Team Building

For us, team building is about more than just offering a social opportunity for people to network. It’s about offering team members an opportunity to find better ways of working as well as having fun. Not every client is looking for such learning opportunities. Some just want to offer their teams, often those with remote workers within them, a chance to have fun together. But even those have no issue at all with their people picking up useful tips on how to be more effective along the way.

Good team building activities for work offer the participants a chance to do something very different to what they do day-to-day at work. Ideally, the activity should involve something fun and seemingly unconnected with their normal work. The key word there is “seemingly”. An activity can seem to have nothing in common with the team’s normal workload. Yet, with a closer look, they can discover there are far more similarities than they appreciated at the time.

How so? If the activity is constructed to require teams and individuals to use the same skill sets and approaches that are useful at work, then how they tackle the activity can provide insights that may help the team back at work. Often, people find it easier to adopt different ways of working when an issue isn’t tackled head on. They can be too set in their ways to be open to different approaches to a familiar challenge. Provide them with a different challenge that has similar restrictions or problems to solve. They’ll be far more open to identifying a different approach to it. And then they can adapt that approach to the real challenge back at work and see if it makes things better in some way. It often does.

The Key to Learning Success

Key to achieving such improvements is setting time aside for a debrief. Of course, it’s possible for people to pick up ideas without a structured approach, but teams can get much more value by using a debriefing process after tackling team building activities. For work events, it turns a fun time into something more than just that. Fun and useful.

As you’d expect, our own options all have a debriefing process built into the activity. They are all optional – they can be skipped without any difficulty at all – but teams often find using them as much fun as the action itself.

Fun and useful. Now that’s a mix worth making an aspiration for any event organizer!

Our online brand is, of course, “Global Team Building”. It’s fair to say that the majority of what we do, by volume of the number of events, is indeed team building of one kind or another. But by number of participants, it is not quite such a clear-cut distinction. We also often run events which are less about team building and more about employee engagement. And, since we focus on online delivery, we are talking about engaging teams virtually.

Clients are interested in employee engagement for very widespread reasons. It may be just an opportunity to give people a fun time that they can really engage with. More commonly, though, clients are doing something new that they want their people to engage with. It might be that the organization is redefining its set of values and want everyone to have them at the forefront of their thoughts. Perhaps they are introducing new processes that they want everyone to be familiar with. Or maybe they are launching a new product – or range of products – that everyone needs to understand and get behind.

Gamification

Whatever the reason, our clients understand that it’s not enough to just tell people things. If you really want the messages to be assimilated to a good enough degree, you need to engage with your people. Engaging teams virtually is a great way of doing just that.

Very little motivates people more than a competition. Especially a competition that’s fun to be in! And our approach to engaging teams virtually is always to add gamification to the learning process.

For example, we have had more than one client that has introduced Robotic Process Automation to the administrative functions. It’s a great time saver and reduces “boring” workloads for admin staff. But it’s a very different approach to the long-established manual process. Helping people come to terms with it is a challenge. And one that we have helped whole departments and functions come to terms with. In a fun way. A gamified way.

Ideal framework

Our VirtuWall platform is an ideal framework to create something special in such cases. We gamify the learning process and develop a real understanding within the participant group. And we offer instant, dynamic insights into how the group is developing its understanding of the topic along the way. Event organizers and named senior leaders have access to all the stats VirtuWall provides throughout the process. At the end of the event, it can even help organizers plan for any future development needs – at both a group and individual level, as required. Everyone wins when participants learn what they are meant to, have a good time in the process and organizers stay on top of all the data coming their way.

It’s a very visual approach too. As a multimedia experience, it’s second to none. We have many ways the experience can be presented, but more often than not it’s all set in a 3D world that people become immersed in. We incorporate every type of element that helps with the learning process. These usually include video elements as well as gamified ways of helping people understand the key messages. And we usually structure the approach so that people are in teams. The advantages that competition brings are stronger that way.

Fun for everyone

Engaging teams virtually is a fun thing for us to do too! We usually enjoy such employee engagement events at least as much as our participants! And since we facilitate the event online, we are forever growing the number of people we stay in contact with after an event is finished. We have friends all around world because of our successful employee engagement events!

One thing we know for sure is that we’re different. We’ve been delivering VirtuWall events since 2011, online events generally since 2008 and we’ve worked with geographically spread teams since our inception way back in 1990s. The difficult part of that, though, is that people really need to chat with us to get a feel for what we can bring for them. Please do contact us if you have any kind of employee engagement requirement in the pipeline. With our experience, we could help you get to grips with it even if you find that our approach isn’t for you. Engaging teams virtually? Contact us 🙂

Why do people search for virtual scavenger hunt ideas? Some are looking for something to do with family and friends. Some are looking for something for their children and their friends to do. Probably those in the largest group, though, are looking for an online team building option for themselves and their colleagues.

The options fall into 3 main ideas categories:

• Physical scavenger hunts presented online
• Virtual scavenger hunts for things found online on various publicly available sites, using Google, Bing or some other search tool
• Virtual scavenger hunts contained within a site designed purely for the activity itself

Let’s delve into each of these categories in turn in a bit more detail.

Physical Scavenger Hunts

People looking for these are trying to save themselves time and effort in coming up with their own list of items to collect. They were very popular in the early days of pandemic lockdown. People came up with lists of everyday items commonly available in homes. The idea was that the first person to either collect an individual item or collect all of the items wins the game. As much fun as they were initially, people got bored with these fairly quickly. There’s only so many things that are interesting enough to collect and likely to be available in every home. In any case, the same people probably won each time.

Virtual Scavenger Hunts Across the Internet

In a way, these are very similar to the first category. People looking for these are also likely to be saving themselves time and effort for something that is simple in design. The big difference, of course, is that the participants are not getting up and doing things. Rather they are using their online searching skills to track down items. The main challenge with this form of virtual scavenger hunt is coming up with the list of items. They need to be possible to find on the Internet, but difficult enough that a simple Google or Bing search doesn’t simply come up with a list to choose from. Hence people search for ideas.

Virtual Scavenger Hunts Contained Within a Site

This category is very different to the first two. A site that is designed to hold a virtual scavenger hunt within itself will, most likely, be a professional site created for those wanting something a little different to the freely available other options. It might be designed purely for individual participation or one designed for teams. The latter will more likely be for professional online team building and best accessed through a laptop or desktop. The former will, more likely than not, be available through a downloadable app and played on smartphones.

Individual Apps

The best rated apps for online scavenging tend to be those that focus on “hidden objects”. Essentially, they are each a “Where’s Waldo” style game. Some are happy to be just that. Others go beyond that and incorporate an Adventure style game also. You can find Android hidden objects games here and iOS hidden objects games here.

Team Options

There are far fewer options for teams. Although with individual apps you can always set up your own leaderboard and have people within a team compete with everyone else, that kind of destroys the whole idea of building teams with such an activity. The good news is that they do exist, though. Our own MiniScavenge is a prime example of this. It’s been around for many years now, so it’s not a response to the pandemic. And it has had many, many thousands of participants over the years. So it’s tried and tested. And it is, of course, more than just a scavenger hunt.

Set in a choice of 3D “worlds”, that we call “scenes”, it is more than just an online scavenger hunt, of course. In addition to collecting particular items, teams are working together to find the answers to some interestingly presented clues and working together to solve some team puzzles. It’s a comprehensive, fun online team building solution that is much appreciated by participants and organizers alike.

You can book a demonstration here. If you’re interested in finding virtual scavenge hunt ideas, we’re convinced that you’ll enjoy looking at ours!

One of the fads of the late twenty-teens in team exercises was the Escape Room. They sprung up everywhere. Used by families, groups of friends and as a company team building session alike, it became the “thing to do”. There was even a movie made set in one. And when the pandemic hit, Escape Room providers switched to a virtual delivery mechanism, mostly using Zoom and headcams of some kind on their own people. Both virtual and, once again, in-person escape rooms remain popular today.

For those not already familar with the concept, the idea is that a bunch of people are “trapped” in a room – sometimes in a series of interconnected rooms. To get out of it (or them), they must tackle a number of puzzles. Solving each of the puzzles provides them with something they need on the path to opening the room door. Without solving all of the puzzles presented, they cannot open the door. They cannot escape.

Quality and Variety

It can be great fun depending on the quality and variety of the puzzles. The quality is important because the puzzles need to be hard enough to present a real challenge yet not so hard that an average group couldn’t solve them. The variety is important because everyone is different. People like different things. If an escape room provider is not careful, they can provide a set of challenges that are interesting to some of the group but boring to others in the same group. That’s particularly important if the escape room is being used for team building. A good team building activity should allow all group members strengths to be highlighted and not just a select few.

Opposite

So what is the opposite of an escape room? A room with an open door and that requires no effort to get out of? Well, maybe. But we took a different take on that with our newest MiniScavenge scene. Set on Mars, the action takes place within a colony that includes two vital buildings. Each building is made up from airtight compartments. In other words, they are rooms. And we’ve created it so that the room doors won’t open until team challanges are passed. So that’s our take on the oppoosite of an escape room. Getting into rooms rather than getting out of them!

And the nature of MiniScavenge is that teams are collecting scavenger items and answwering treasure hunt clues that can only be completed by accessing all of the rooms. What items are they collecting in our Martian Colony? Well, aliens of course! Cuddly, cute looking ones. None of which are ever likely to pop out of the colonists’ chests!

A First

This is our first MinScavenge scene set, in part at least, indoors. Our other scenes are mostly set in the great outdoors, with the occasional building that can be entered. With Martian Colony, there is some some outdoors action but the majority of it happens within the two buildings. Each building has multiple levels within it, so it is still very much a varied scene. And the team puzzles are varied too, of course. Some of them can be solved by just one person, but many require coordinated team collaboration. Just like happens in real work life.

And just like in all of other scenes, there is a team leaderboard to add that special element of competition. The team that finishes at the top will not be there by chance. They will have proven themselves to be the best team for sure.

Demonstrating our Escape Room Variation

If our newest scene is something you’d like to have a look at, you can book a demonstration here. We will gladly transport you to Mars and show you around the colony. And maybe introduce you to the occasional cute alien too!

Different clients come to us for similar reasons yet call what they are looking for different things. Some are looking for online team building, some remote team building and others for virtual team building. To us, they are all the same thing. But could they be different? Well, yes. They could. Certainly, each word describes a different aspect of a team event.

Elements

Thinking about it:

• Online describes the mechanism used to deliver the activity
• Remote describes the group topography
• Virtual describes the type of activity

So, all three are important elements in describing what we do for and with clients. Let’s delve deeper into each of them.

Online

Each of the three elements are important, of course. But online is perhaps a broader element that the other two. Why? Because as well as describing the mechanism used to deliver the activity, it also describes the main characteristic of the group’s workplace. That is, people are not all together in one place. Whether that is because they are spread across a few offices, working from home or some combination of the two, they connect using technology.

For us, for a team building activity to be as useful to the group as it is fun, it needs to have as many parallels back to the workplace as possible in how the group need to tackle it. We want the action to be different to what the group does day-to-day. But we also want the way in which the group goes about the action to be as similar as possible to the way in which the group goes about its day-to-day work. That way, the activity is relevant to the group. And, with relevance comes learning potential. Yes, it’s more than possible for a team building activity – online or otherwise – to be useful in helping the team improve in the future as well as fun at the time.

To add to the potential for relevance and learning, our options are accessed with a standard browser and an Internet connection the only requirements. When it comes to connecting team members, they can use the same tools they normally use to connect with one another. Some clients have even used our activities to help people get to grips with their standard meeting tools!

Remote

People are surely only interested in what we do if at least some – maybe only one – of their people are not together as they work. This may be because of changed working approaches as a consequence of Covid, with some or potentially all now working from home. Or it may be because the nature of the group is that it is spread across locations. Most of our pre-Covid clients were within large organizations with teams that operated a follow-the-sun methodology for a 24-hour operation of some kind. So, their teams were very widely spread.

Whatever your group topology, you’re surely only reading this because your people are spread geographically. Whatever the reason and however far they are spread. The good news is that our options are suitable for just about any topological profile we can imagine.

Virtual

A virtual team building activity is one that happens in cyberspace. Nothing is real other than team interactions. For example, within our MiniScavenge activity, teams need to collect items of various types within a 3D scene. The items are no more real than the places they are positioned in. Yet team members need to work together to access them and collect them. In much the same way as team members need to collaborate within a Teams, WebEx or Zoom meeting to achieve things for the team back in the real world.

Similarly, within our Space Rescue activity, team members need to collaborate to solve a variety of puzzles to save a fictitious crew on board a fictitious spacecraft when a ficitious explosion has crippled the spacecraft’s fictitious systems. It’s all virtual, yet the actions that team members have to take and the manner in which they work together will determine whether or not the spacecraft’s crew are saved.

Combined

So putting all three elements together describes what we offer clients in total. Online, Remote and Virtual Team Building. No “or” required! It’s holistic. All three are important.

You might be a leader choosing an online team building activity for your remote team. Or you might have been tasked by a leader to find one. Either way, how do you go about it? There seem to be so many different options available these days. The online team building activity landscape has changed dramatically thanks to the pandemic. Pre-pandemic, we think we were the only people offering team activities for remote teams. Now, many providers have adapted their offerings to utilize technology to help deliver them.

But how different are they? And how flexible are they if you want an experience that is tailored to your organization?

Different

Back in the mists of time, we used to deliver team building activities in person. Even then we were different. We noticed the options from other providers were all very similar. Those that didn’t base themselves outdoors with physical challenges – such as ropes or quad biking – tended to be based on successful TV game shows of one kind or another. We lost count of the number of providers that offered something along the lines of The Apprentice or MasterChef, for example. Sure, different providers might give their version different names, but the gameplay would be similar in each case.

None of our in-person team activities were based on anything other than our own creativity. And our online team building activities are the same. Each and every one is different to anything that other providers offer. And, indeed, different to one another within our own portfolio.

Tailoring

And we can tailor each and every one of our online team building activities. And one of them, VirtuWall, offers a flexible platform that has been designed to be tailored. Each and every time it runs, it is configured differently. Indeed, it always looks different for each client requirement. Often VirtuWall events have a very different look and feel to one another.

Choosing

So how do you go about choosing an online team building activity? People use different approaches. Some go on “gut feel” while others have a list of criteria by which they will make their decision. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. It’s all well and good to have a perfect list that you can use to narrow down the options, but one big advantage of an online team building activity is that it can be easily demonstrated – online of course! Your “gut feel” is important. You know your group and what its members are likely to like and what they aren’t.

If you make sure you have a demonstration of the activity, you will know whether or not it is one that your colleagues will appreciate and enjoy. And if you’ve used a list of criteria to narrow down the options to begin with, you can be sure that your shortlist contains ones that will deliver against your pre-determined success factors.

Criteria

What sort of criteria might you have on your list? Here’s a few to consider:

• Degree of enjoyment – do you want your people to enjoy the activity?
• Learning potential – do you want the activity to provide your people an opportunity for individual and/or team improvement back in the workplace?
• Amount of variety – does the activity offer enough variation to appeal to your whole group?
• Duration – how much time do you want to dedicate to the activity?
• Topology – how does the activity allow your geographically separated group members to join it? Does everyone need to be involved at the same time?
• Structure – will your people need to be organized into teams or can they all be kept as one group?
• Competition, collaboration or both – do you want something inherently competitive, inherently collaborative or a mix of the two?

Demonstration

As mentioned above though, having a demonstration is a vital step if you want to be sure you choose the best option – whatever the match up against the criteria that your potential choices have. So be sure to insist upon one. And be sure to allocate sufficient time for the demonstration. This will ensure that you can see all you need to see and be sure you are making the best decision.

Of course, we offer demonstrations for each and every one of our activities!

Sometimes, coming up with a new topic for an online team building article is challenging to say the least. Particularly after a holiday weekend as we have just had in the UK. To help with that, we called upon a creativity technique devised by Dr Edward de Bono. As many readers may know, he is the creator of Lateral Thinking. He is less well known for his creativity tools, though. These help people look at an issue from a lateral perspective. One of these tools is known as Random Entry.

We use many of his creativity tools to help create our new activities. But it’s easy enough to also use them to come up with a new topic for an article.

Random Entry is a technique that involves adding a random element into an issue or the solution of an issue. It may not always come up with a solution you want to proceed with, but it is pretty much guaranteed to come up with different perspective for you to consider. And in that difference you might just find something you hone to make it work. For this article, we used an online random word generator and it came up with the word “Structure“.

So our job now was to give this article a focus around structure. Here goes…

Online team building structure

There are different ways that structure needs to be taken into account when it comes to running an online team building event. For the purposes of this article, we’re going to look at team structure. Whatever size group you have, you are probably going to want to organize it into teams. Why? There are a few answers to that question:

For a team activity to be useful as well as fun, you want the way in which it runs to have as many parallels back into the workplace as possible. By doing this, people can see the relevance of the activity. And this gives you a chance – if you want it – to extract real learning from the time spent. In real life, your people are organized into teams, so you’ll want the structure of having different teams for the activity.

You’ll want everyone to be engaged with the activity and for everyone to be able to have an impact on the achievement of their team. Depending on the activity, we generally find the best team sizes are beween 5 and 10 people. Less than 5 and a team might not be diverse enough to bring different strengths to the team. More than 10 and people can “hide” during action, letting others in the team do all the work.

If your people are geographically spread (rather than all based in the same office), you’ll probably want to create teams that combine people from different locations. This will give everyone a chance to extend their personal networks and get to know people from other areas.

You’ll also probably want to make sure the mix in each team represents other diverse aspects of your group.

A technique for generating diverse teams

Many of our clients ask for our assistance in setting up their teams such that each do offer a mix of diversity within. We call the method we use “pseudo random“. How we do it is to ask for information on each individual within a spreadsheet. In addition to their names, we ask for extra spreadsheet columns that represent diversity factors that are inportant to that client.

Typical examples are:

• Location
• Role / level within the organization
• Longevity of service

… but it could be anything. Gender, shoe size, height, eye color etc. etc.

Assign team numbers

We then order the participant list by these factors. For example, if we have the 3 typical factors above, we would order them by location and within that by role or level and within that by longevity of service. We would then assign a team number to each in turn. If we are planning for 10 teams in total, we would assign 1 to 10 for the first 10 people in the list and then begin again at 1, continuing down the list until all have a team number assigned.

That will give us a team structure that guarantees a nice mix of people within each team. Structure complete!

As we sat down to think about this next blog entry, Easter started to enter our thoughts. At the time of typing, the Easter weekend is just a few days away. When we think of Easter, we can’t help but think of Easter Eggs. But this is an online team building focused blog, so the question we asked ourselves was simply “can we tie the two together?”

It was easy. In fact, there are two different ways the two tie together nicely. And they take two different definitions of “Easter Egg”. The Oxford English Dictionary, via their Lexicon site, tells us what those definitions are:

• An artificial chocolate egg or decorated hard-boiled egg given at Easter – and…
• An unexpected or undocumented feature in a piece of computer software or on a DVD, included as a joke or a bonus

A tasty prize

Thinking of the first of these definitions, it’s about a present given at a pre-determined time. We usually recommend to clients that they consider having prizes for the members of the team that performs the best in any of our activities at the end of the client event. It adds nicely to the motivation of the group members and is a nice way of recognizing achievement. It can really add to the “buzz” our activities always generate within the group.

Of course, giving prizes when your group is all together is easy. Handing out boxes of chocolates, bottles of wine, replicas of Olympic medals – all are easily possible when people are together. But if your group is apart and perhaps spread across a number of different countries, you need to be a bit more creative.

An obvious possibility is to provide Amazon vouchers to each of the winning team members. Yet, as far and wide as Amazon has spread, it is not available in every country. So it may not work for you.

Creative

Our clients have proven to be very creative indeed, though. One client came up with the one we love the most and have recommended to other clients. Not everyone can take up the idea, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a great one. Winning team members are each awarded extra holiday time!

It might be a whole day, just half a day – the duration awarded matters far less tha the fact that it is paid time off on offer. People really do appreciate the prize when clients adopt it.

Surprise!

Thinking now of the second definition, that of an unexpected or undocumented feature, we have the advantage that all of our online team building activities really are delivered using technology and not just an online meeting tool. We are able to add these kind of Easter Eggs into our options. And we do.

For example, within VirtuWall events, we often add an extra Easter Egg task (and thereby points) when participants find a particular item or answer a particular question. It’s unexpected and undocumented, but suddenly the surprise gives a huge buzz to any team that discovers it.

So, there we have it. Easter Eggs and Online Team Building hand-in-hand. If you’re reading this in time, have a great Easter!

For some reason, any post that starts “7 reasons” attracts readers. So we thought we’d have a go. Online team building is what we do, so this post offer 7 reasons for you to do some. In fact, not only why it’s worth doing but why it’s worth getting the professionals involved. In other words, why you really should buy it and not run it yourself.

First, then, the list. In reverse order. Why not – it surely adds to the drama that way?

7. The professionals know what they are doing
6. Online team building is easier to schedule
5. Online team building is more environmentally friendly
4. Online team building is cheaper than running events in person
3. Online team building involves everyone
2. Online team building is fun
1. Online team building reflects the way you work

Now for a little detail on each of the 7 reasons online team building is worth buying, in the same order as above.

7. The professionals know what they are doing

Last on our list, but obviously an early plug for involving us. We can’t speak for everyone who offers online team building activities, but we’ve been doing this for many years. In fact, we launched our first online option in 2008. Try finding another provider that can claim to have been active in the online community as long as us. More importantly that that, what that means is that we have a track record that gives new clients the confidence that our options will deliver for them. Our client list is impressive and second to none. And every client will talk kindly on our behalf. You can check some testimonials for us here. No one wants to be responsible for organizing a badly received event. Make sure yours isn’t! And there’s only so many trivia quizzes people can stand. Move up to a professional event!

6. Online team building is easier to schedule

The logistics of getting a group together increases exponentially with the size of the group, of course. But even getting a time for small groups to all come together in-person can be challenging. You have to factor in the travel time as well as the time spent physically together, of course. And if the event is planned to run for more than one day and include hotel accommodation, you also need to factor in personal commitments that may clash with a stay-over. When people join an online event, you only have to worry about scheduling the actual time they spend together.

5. Online team building is more environmentally friendly

Let’s compare an online event with an in-person event. Even if your in-person event is for people who are geographically close together – perhaps even work at the same office – they have to travel to the event.

Unless they all drive electric vehicles, that’s going to affect the environment. And if any have further to travel to the venue, we’re probably talking about flights to get there and get back after the event. More pollution for sure.

4. Online team building is cheaper than running events in person

This is almost a copy and paste of reason #5. All the things that are environmentally unfriendly also cost more. Travel can be expensive. Unless you keep it in-house at your offices, hiring a venue isn’t free. And if anyone needs accommodation, the costs can really start to mount. An online team activity requires none of that. Everyone already has what they need to attend. A computer, an internet connection and a browser.

3. Online team building involves everyone

Many teams are hybrids. That is, have some people working from an office and some working from home. Those that work from home can often feel excluded from the team when in-person events are run and they are not invited. An online event allows all to join in equally.

2. Online team building is fun

We think team activities should offer more than just fun (see this post for details). But fun is a vital element, that’s for sure. A fun event that everyone enjoys can impact positively on team effectiveness if the activity is structured just right. We know that people are different. One person’s idea of fun could be very different to their team colleagues. So our options offer great variety so everyone not only can but will want to join in. Fun guaranteed!

1. Online team building reflects the way you work

Anyone considering adding an online team building activity to an event they are planning is likely to do so because their team is split geographically. That may be because the team is spread across a country, across different countries and even spread across continents. The key thing is, though, that they will use technology as the platform that binds the different team members together. Our activities do the same thing. Which means that not only are they fun but, for those looking for more than just fun, they offer an insight into how the team can improve. Basically, our online options are relevant to the way your team works day-to-day. So the learning can be powerful. All in addition to providing a fun time for everyone!

There’s your 7 reasons online team building is worth buying!

Running an online team activity seems an obvious path for organizations to travel these days. Why? For many, it’s obvious because it’s the only real option if people are working from home. Even for those who nowadays spend some time in the office, but other times from home. Getting everyone together in person remains dificult – and relatively expensive, of course. People have become used to online team meetings using the likes of Microsoft Teams, WebEx, Zoom or GoToMeeting. Adding a team activity to a regularly scheduled online meeting seems easy enough to do. So people do just that.

But maybe they are missing a trick or two in taking this obvious path.

Definitions

People often confuse team building with team bonding. Ignore the word “team” in those two pairs of words and perhaps you can see what we mean. The definitions of “building” and “bonding” are very different. The Oxford Dictionary defines this type of “building” as “The creation or development of something over a period of time” on their Lexicon site. The same site defines “bonding” as “The establishment of a relationship or link with someone based on shared feelings, interests, or experiences”.

Put the word “team” back in the mix for each of them and you can see that the outcomes of these two different approaches to an activity. “Team Bonding” is clearly about offering a shared experience for team members. There’s no requirement that shared experience is something that everyone enjoys or that delivers team performance. Whereas “Team Building” is clearly focused on team development. This implies that the team gets something out of it, though again there’s no requirement that the process is an enjoyable one.

Fun

Just to be clear, we’re very much on the side of delivering activities that team members enjoy. That are fun for everyone. Yet people are different and one team member’s idea of fun could be very different to another’s. Team bonding activities tend to be one dimensional. What we mean by that is that they largely have a single focus on something in particular. For example “Chocolate tasting” or “cookery” of some kind. Some people in the team will adore that focus. Others will be happy enough to give it a try, even if it wouldn’t really be their choice. And others still would rather go to the dentist.

It doesn’t matter why that third group hate the idea. And it doesn’t matter what sort of percentage of the whole group are in it. If just one person in the group will find the activity their idea of purgatory, the activity will fail to achieve whole group bonding. Indeed, it may actually achieve the reverse – you may end up creating cliques of those who like whatever it was you were doing and those who didn’t enjoy it at all.

Teamwork

Teamwork is surely about harnessing the differences in the team members to the team’s benefit. It certainly shouldn’t be about turning those differences into something that is detrimental to team performance.

We feel that proper online team building activities should be different. They should offer sufficient variety to ensure there’s something in them that enables everyone to participate fully. They should also provide a platform for the team to learn something that helps it be more effective at work afterwards. Or at least provide that opportunity even if the team is actually just looking for something that is fun for all.

If you fancy loooking in more detail at an activity that fits the bill in this regard, check out our MiniScavenge activity. We think it’s definitely a proper online team building activity!

We hope that you have a better understanding now of the building or bonding team activity debate.