While the health benefits of working from home are obvious in the current situation, most employees are accustomed to social interactions in the office, and may feel overwhelmed by this loss. Helping team members to feel connected and engaged as a team, is imperative for productivity and business continuity.
Here’s an activity you can organize for your team using WhatsApp Group Chat!
How to organize it:
- Create a WhatsApp Group Chat (hopefully, you already have one!). Announce the date and time for the team building activity.
- After a brief introductory chat, begin the activity by challenging the team to post ‘5 of something’.
- For example: “Give me 5 team goals for next week”, “Give me 5 things we miss doing as a team”, “Give me 5 things you will do once the Pandemic subsides”, “Give me 5 names of our clients” …
- Tell members how you would like them to respond: List as a single message, send a voice note, post as an image…
- Be creative. Make sure the challenges are appropriate to what you want to achieve. It can be outright funny or a bit more serious, work-related, organization related, general, product or process based, it depends on your objectives.
- The team can then spend time ‘discussing’ member’s answers after each ‘challenge’ via a group video call (up to 4 members) or, they could post voice notes.
- Points may be awarded based on who responds first, or whose responses are the best!
- Capture the main outcomes of the activity in a short memo, and e-mail it to the employees as a reminder of the experience.
Virtual team building is not likely to be as good as the in-person bonding, but something is better than nothing!
For ‘work from home’ to succeed, especially for organizations that don’t have remote work embedded in their cultures, supervisors and managers must focus on continuing to build team relationships and team spirit.
Watch this space for more such simple and quick virtual team building ideas!
Happy quarantine!