Topic:
Team Building and Engagement exercises for both Remote and Onsite Teams in COVID Environment
Information Requested:
An ICBE member company has stopped all team building events since COVID-19. They would like to know about:
- any virtual events companies are running for their remote teams
- and also any ideas for product builder teams (onsite) that allow for the maintenance of social distancing but still build team spirit
Objective:
To hear what other companies are doing around teambuilding and engagement for both remote and onsite workers.
Some ideas:
- Great teambuilding ideas with ie
Steps challenge set up, this got very competitive! 😊 it got everyone out walking and running. Prizes for the top 3 and the more steps done over all the more money was given to charity.
- paintclub.ie – “paint and sip” night
Series of wellness talks set up over the next few months – wellbeing in challenging times, food, mood and function etc.
- For any type of hamper, e.g. Christmas or a remote working hamper - Kim McKeever kim@backupmarketing.ie https://www.backupmarketing.ie/about
- Online ergonomics training - Adrian Carmody carmody@optimatraining.ie
We are starting to do some of our team building exercises again using Kahoot and Teams. Just fun quizzes about the parts of the world that we operate in, and fun facts about staff etc. We use them as opening to some of our sessions. Kahoot is a fantastic tool https://kahoot.com/
We’ve been using a company called Dynamic Events – for some virtual team fun – they are super .However, wouldn’t be suitable for production / operations team building
We have been offering a free Webinar to all of our employees twice a year, it used to be an evening event in a hotel.
I used a fantastic tool for staff engagement which works for both onsite and remote teams while in the UK. It is a global product but I’m not sure who the rep in Ireland is.
https://www.anevenbetterplacetowork.com/
The main contact is Shay McConnon. He is Irish and it is his company.
You can call him on +44 (0)1425 612610.
Two sessions I have found useful are
- Boundary spanning workshop. The centre for creative leadership in the US work with your training/Development team on various leadership development programmes. One of these is called boundary spanning and is about breaking down barriers between groups. Several tactics to use to get real partnership between functional groups. I have a booklet which is very self explanatory but all I could attach were these two docs which give a tiny glimpse. This lends itself to virtual team learning.
- Pure fun and team building. Disco bingo on a Friday evening with a virtual just eat voucher was a fun team building 90 minutes.
Disco Bingo Explainer https://vimeo.com/460938695/b37c511e98
See attachments A, B and C
We are doing a few things:
- Our GM has called in groups all people working from home and had an informal chat – this was done earlier in the pandemic
- For the Children’s Christmas party this year we will be sending the Santy gifts to all the children’s homes – sign up as usual.
- The adults party this year is a zoom call with some fun and a raffle.
- We are planning on sending a small gift to everyone in the plant from the leadership team to say thank you for the year.
- The sports and social club – as it is not as active have instead had frequent draws with great prizes and are planning on a Christmas gift too
- Managers are encouraged to have at least weekly calls with their teams.
- We produced a video plantwide for everyone and had people talking from home and in the office and saying what it was like
- Our plantwide meetings are now virtual and recorded. Questions are asked for before and answered on the call
- We are planning a live plantwide call before Christmas (for all employees)
From a previous enquiry with https://growremote.ie/
https://blog.toasty.ai/8-virtual-team-building-activities-your-remote-team-will-love/
- Online Pictionary using zoom and whiteboard function: https://randomwordgenerator.com/pictionary.php
- Trivia/ Pub Quiz (Kahoot!) Individual vs teams Teams would be in breakout rooms so that they can talk with each other.
- Potential Question source: https://www.randomtriviagenerator.com/?fbclid=IwAR3mVep1dcLeuN1mxmfoSjKf8iLFwGz3qCV9TMTonNkrkCwuM9ggHnUFtnE#!/
- (I’m putting this in as a resource, but I’m tempted to say that this is not the right setting for a game like that.)
- Jigsaw puzzle racingUsing the breakout rooms function in Zoom we split our teams into groups of five and each group had to complete the same online jigsaw as quickly as they could. We used the private game function in https://jigsawpuzzles.io/# It worked really well and was good for team building too. 4/5
- source: https://www.secret-source.eu/staying-sane-during-these-strange-times-part-1/
Coffee Roulette – matches employees for coffee based on the days of the week they have in common
In terms of virtual events we have organised the following:
- Team or office quizzes
- Coffee catch ups (one-to-one or team basis) with no work related discussions
- Photo slide shows – where employees submit photos of different activities they have been doing while working from home
We have been running virtual all employee townhalls; specific virtual updates on Covid related topics;
We have also started running a ‘Coffee with our MD’ session very fortnight where we invite 6 employees who are working onsite and another 6 who are working remotely to join (either in person or virtually) to an informal get together with our MD to give feedback on anything they wish to and discuss what is working well or not so well; all participants get some treats and coffee/tea. For those joining remotely we post out tea and biscuits to them!
We are planning a virtual Santa event for employees’ children where they can book a slot to meet santa virtually and get a gift from the Company.
We haven’t run any specific events for our manufacturing group who continue to work onsite but would be very interested to hear any feedback you receive in this regard.
We have suspended all Team Building and Engagement events due to COVID-19 as well.
To keep the team involved and talking we have been using MS Teams for a weekly 40-45 minute meeting to discuss current and future projects, regulatory and team developments plus to discuss “issues of the day” to ensure that we learn the pertinent lessons from projects, audits and reports.
This is a development from the 15-20 minute weekly meeting we had before the Lock Downs started.
We have provided
- Online yoga - well received although only taken up by a small number of colleagues
- Online wine tasting - provided by Sports & Social Club – good take-up/feedback very positive
- Online Christmas wreath-making - again being planned for mid-Nov by Sports & Social Club
- County Jersey Day - planned for early Nov by Charities Committee to raise funds for some local charities – open to all
Onsite we have completed the following over the COVID period:
- Online virtual Quiz for Safety week and give prizes
- Other areas are doing virtual coffees once a week
