Easter Eggs and Online Team Building

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!