Choosing an Online Team Building Activity

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!