Top tips from the experts at BreakoutIQ

Your possibilities with remote team building events are endless. From virtual scavenger hunts, virtual escape rooms, virtual game shows to virtual trivia, there are many ways to engage with your team in a remote setting. Your goal is to create a memorable experience for your team that encourages them to collaborate and learn from each other while having fun. If you’re new to planning and hosting these types of events, the process can be a bit overwhelming. Luckily, we have a few tips for you to help ensure your remote team building event is a successful one!

The Basics: Planning Your Remote Team Building Event

When planning your remote team building event, start with the basics. The first step is to determine what your expectations and objectives are for this event. For most, their main objective would be creating a smooth and easy to understand game built for all personality types to create a more engaging group experience. You will also want to be selective with the timing and length of your event. We have found that it is helpful to keep even start and end times. Other aspects to consider to help you achieve your event objectives include: event group size and selecting the right theme and event.

The Setting: Selecting the Right Virtual Event & Theme

Once you have outlined your expectations and objectives, work on selecting the right game and theme to achieve your goals. It can be beneficial to send out a small survey to your team to gauge interest in game and theme type. Game and theme choice selection need to be accessible to all skill levels and participants. Collaborative event selections will help, because teammates can rely on each other when necessary. No one has to feel like they have to know or understand everything.

If you are looking for a fast-paced interactive game experience, you might choose a virtual escape room. For something that will spark more conversation and team engagement, try virtual trivia or a virtual office feud game. To get people on their feet while learning more about each other in a fun dynamic way, a virtual scavenger hunt would be ideal. You could also try a traditional “Get to Know Me” icebreaker if you are mainly wanting people to get to know each other better. There are several theme options for any of these events. Some that we particularly like and know work well for virtual team building events include: Health and Wellness, Pop Culture, Awards Season, Halloween, and other Holidays.

The Logistics: Plan Ahead for Remote Team Members

Planning ahead will help ensure that your event is successful with participants wanting to attend more and recommending it to others. While planning ahead can help you as the organizer and host it can also help your participants. Having a buzz and built up excitement for the event can make it more interesting and ultimately more fun for everyone. Come up with a small blurb about your event to pass along to the participants about 2-4 days in advance. This time frame tends to work well and keeps participant schedule changes and overall workload into consideration. You could also consider making a sizzle reel to pass along to participants to generate more buzz for the event.

The Energy: Keeping The Momentum For Your Team

You will want to keep everyone engaged and energized during your event. The activity selection itself should generate a lot of energy and enthusiasm. Some tips to help keep up momentum that you can build into the event include: adding a light competitive element, incorporating multiple types of rounds and challenges (keeps each activity fresh and provides new things to engage with), and keeping your groups/ teams small. Having a great host can also make a big difference in the overall success of your virtual team building event.

The Host: Guiding Your Virtual Team Event

The right host can really enhance your participants’ experience. A good host maintains a positive and upbeat attitude throughout the activity while providing short clear instructions to help preserve momentum and energy. Virtual team building hosts should provide regular scores and game updates that emphasize the competitive aspect of the activity. It is important for the host to step in and help or provide encouragement when participants are feeling stuck. It takes some practice and skill to be a great host. Even if you master all of the above mentioned skills, you still need to be able to improvise and adjust the activity as needed to fit within given time restraints. This is no small task!

Ready to Plan Your Remote Team Building Event? We’re Here to Help!

Creating a virtual team building event that is fun, engaging and meets your event objectives is not as easy as it sounds; it can be complicated, time consuming and may require technical knowledge and resources that may not be readily available. We’ve heard from organizers who had difficulty with this and chose to come to us instead. With BreakoutIQ, all the content creation and activity design is done for you. All you have to do is find the event that works best for you, book it and have your attendees join us on a virtual meeting; we handle the rest. We have years of experience designing and hosting team building events, we’ve hosted thousands of events for tens of thousands of participants, and we have hundreds of 5-star reviews on Yelp and Google from satisfied clients who were glad they found us and used us for their team building needs.

Contact the BreakoutIQ Team today to book your next virtual team trivia contest, scavenger hunt, or other remote team building activity.