You found our list of the best remote team meeting ideas.
Remote team meeting ideas are activities that allow your team members to interact with each other beyond simply finishing work-related duties. Examples include Guess the Work Desk, Lightning Scavenger Hunt, and Icebreaker Questions. These ideas are critical to help your staff bond as a unit, communicate more effectively, and feel more motivated.
This article contains:
- remote team meeting ideas for meetings
- remote team meeting locations
- remote team meeting activities
Here we go!
List of remote team meeting ideas
The contemporary office is leaning more towards remote work, making getting every employee together more challenging than ever. However, teamwork is still crucial, especially in this digital era. Therefore, setting aside time each month or week for virtual team meeting activities is beneficial. The following are ideas to consider.
1. Guess the Work Desk
This activity is easy and entertaining. The game works regardless of the size of your team. To play “Guess the Desk,” participants must first show off their workspace by posting photos of their desks. Then, you can use a Google Doc that every employee can access. It is your responsibility as the facilitator to ensure that everyone’s work area remains in its original state. Even if there are plenty of empty candy wrappers or stacks of tissues lying about, tell participants not to tidy before giving the tour. Team members may then use the video conference to determine who sits at a particular desk.
You may have your team members make remarks on the document in the margins or on the top or bottom of each image. For instance, a picture of a spotless desk can prompt responses like “orderly” or “tidy.” Playing this game may help everyone on the team get better acquainted. The state of your desk is often a reflection of you. This activity provides a nuanced look at each team member’s traits and quirks.
This game can have many variations. For instance, you can guess each member’s room, following the same process, rather than guessing work desks.
2. Remote meeting icebreaker questions
You can start your remote team hangout on the right foot with simple icebreaker questions. This idea is an easy way to foster cooperation among remote workers. You can easily get participants chatting and connecting quickly by asking a lighthearted and straightforward icebreaker question.
Some examples:
- What is one random fact about you that we do not know?
- Which celebrity would you bring back if you had the power?
- Where would you go if someone gave you a plane ticket to any destination in the world?
- If you were to choose only one dish to eat for the rest of your life, what would it be?
- What would you do with a million dollars if you had to spend it all in a year?
- What superpower would you want to have?
After you and your team have established a rapport, consider asking more in-depth questions. These questions could be about the worker’s interests and may help your remote workers become closely knit. When one opens up about their struggles, fears, and hopes, it often prompts others to share their own.
3. Baby Picture Flood
Seeing each other as kids in funny images is one of life’s greatest pleasures. Also, this idea is a wonderful way to foster unity among the group’s members. The facilitator will have all participants upload their childhood photos to a shared folder. Then, for the game, team members will try to identify the team member in the collection of images posted.
Baby Picture Flood is one of the best remote team meeting ideas for meetings and promotes team bonding via friendly competition. Using infant pictures allows every worker to learn more about their colleagues. In addition, this kind of game promotes lighthearted banter amongst members of your squad.
The simplicity and ease of implementation are two significant benefits of this game. Of course, if you can keep it a secret until the big day, that is even better!
4. Guess Who
Another fun activity you can try for your remote team meeting is having each member share one exciting and maybe surprising fact about themselves with the meeting facilitator. The more outlandish and bizarre, the better. Almost every employee has at least a few stories they would never bring up otherwise. During the meeting, read each fact aloud to the team and have players figure out which colleague submitted the tidbit. You can have multiple rounds if you have a large team, and the team member or group with the most correct guesses wins.
Remote teams, who often feel isolated, can benefit greatly from learning fascinating facts about one another. If you and your colleague discover that you both like listening to the same obscure 80s band or spent time studying abroad in Spain, you may develop a bond that otherwise would not have been possible.
5. Recipes Trade
Since everyone has to eat, you can include a culinary routine in your remote team hangout ideas. For this activity, ask team members to divulge their favorite recipes. Then, you can decide whether it is a morning meal, an evening meal, or a late-night snack.
After every participant has contributed a dish, have them try a sample from the collection weekly. You may all work on the same dish or split up and give each option a go. You should ensure everyone in your team has time to try the recipe before the end of the week and then set aside some time on a Friday to report back on their experiences.
6. Live Lightning Scavenger Hunt
While this idea might demand extra planning and resources, it is exhilarating. You should first compile a list of participants and randomly assign them a number. The participant whose name appears first on the list starts the game. The player will enter a scavenger hunt clue or task into a collaborative document. After a countdown begins, the first teammate to finish their task gets the point. This scavenger hunt is speed-based. The activity is similar to traditional scavenger hunts in that players race against the clock.
For example, team members might have to “grab a mug” or “find the closest blue object.” This game is excellent since its framework is set, yet it still allows for much freedom of choice. A smaller team gives you the freedom to experiment with more complex gameplay. For example, you could try having each guest record a TikTok or giving each member five minutes to draw their desk. Rather than having players participate in the game alone, you may form teams and make it a team-based competition.
After completing each item in the scavenger hunt, you may use this time to spark discussions and allow for casual conversation. Scavenger hunts could also be part of your remote team’s in-person outing ideas.
Find out more virtual scavenger hunt ideas.
7. Personality Tests
For your remote team meeting, you could take a personality test with your coworkers to learn more about each other and have some laughs. You should encourage your teammates to share their results. Then, you can go through the answers together over a video conference call. Examples of free personality quizzes you can try with your team include 16 Personalities and VIA Character.
8. Artist Game
The Artist Game is Pictionary but in reverse. To begin, one of the players will choose a picture at random. You can use a picture generator, or the player can choose their preferred image. The next step is for the participant to explain this picture to the rest of the participants, who will then have to sketch out the idea based on the description.
The catch is that the player can only use geometric shapes to describe the picture. The player may make statements like “a big triangle sits next to a square” or “two little rectangles sit next to one another.” Phrases like “there is a chair on the right” is out of the question.
The player will stop describing the scene after a certain period, usually about three minutes. Every participant then presents their finished product to the group. You can use google docs for this purpose. The player who did the description for that round will then display the original picture. Finally, team members will choose the best sketch.
This game encourages players to think creatively and outside the box to win this game. The sketching process is also enjoyable and cathartic.
9. Birth Map
Learning about the backgrounds of your coworkers may be a lot of fun. Plus, you never know what you will discover about your coworkers when they participate in a team game like birth map. To complete this task, your group must collaborate to make a Google Map.
The steps:
- Sign in to your Google account
- Choose maps from the “your places” menu.
- Click draw a map.
- Choose a location from cities, landmarks, countries, or the entire world.
- Share the map with your coworkers in the sharing settings.
Once you have granted your coworkers access to your map, you may have them add a sticker to the map at or near their birth location. Afterward, you can have your coworkers tell you a funny tale or discuss what they like most about where they were born.
10. Creative Drawing
If you want to encourage your workers to use their imagination, you could use a digital version of the classic whiteboard exercise, where team members doodle directly on your computer screen. A free multiplayer platform like Drawasaurus allows players to take turns drawing a word and have the other players guess the subject. Drawasaurus is available on both computers and mobile devices. You can connect with another video conferencing tool to interact with other team members.
Another creative and entertaining idea is blind drawing. Your team members will need a pen and paper for this activity. You will describe an image and ask them to draw it with closed eyes. You can either give them step-by-step instructions on how to depict the scene or explain the picture in detail. After sketching time, have team members show what they drew.
11. Who Would Win
Who Would Win is one of the fun remote team in-person outing ideas to try. This activity creates room for a bit of debate, which means you need a moderator. You can select some fictional superheroes or villains and hand them around to everyone. Next, team members argue passionately about who would come out on top in a fight. Each round will consist of two participants arguing for 45 seconds over which fictional character would win in a battle. Your teammates ultimately choose sides based on who they believe will win the round. Participants will vote, and the team member or fictional character with the highest vote moves to the next round until there is a victor.
It would help if you let your imagination run wild while picking your characters. Classic heroes like Batman and The Flash are excellent, but the odds might change if the former were shorter and the latter did not have their speed. The debate could encourage some creative problem-solving for your team.
12. Online Murder Mystery
An online murder mystery game could be fun for all participants. The game’s purpose is to have every player working together to solve a mystery. Virtual murder mysteries and escape rooms have gotten increasingly popular as remote work has become the norm.
Murder in Ancient Egypt and The Great British Bump-Off are two examples of popular online murder mystery games that take cues from real-world situations. The first is set in ancient Egypt, while the second is a humorous take on the popular British baking competition. A simple online search will turn up dozens more such lists that have already done the legwork of assembling murder mystery games for you. You should know that some games, including The Movie Murder Mystery and Way Out West, are free to try. Some options also need some planning since they often feature a live host.
13. The Seven-Minute Vision Board
It is common practice to make annual vision boards in January. For this activity, you can ask your teammates to create a seven-minute vision board for the week rather than focusing on the future. You may give your team free rein to make this board how they see fit. For example, participants might type statements, cut and paste photos from the web, or anything else that interests them. You could also have this activity at remote team meeting locations.
14. Fitness Goals
It is common knowledge that WFH employees need to make more of an effort to exercise and keep healthy. The lack of a commute and the generally passive nature of most jobs leave little time or opportunity for exercise. Therefore, encourage your staff to get moving and set some fitness objectives. You can create a monthly fitness competition and provide a prize to the victor. Aside from the obvious health benefits, this idea is also an excellent method to boost morale and teamwork among the group. You may use fitness-sharing apps like Lose It and My Fitness Pal to hold each other accountable and inspire one another to get in shape.
15. Mini Reading Club
For this activity, you could find an article on the internet that your group may read ahead of time and then debate during your remote team meeting. The article might be related to the field you work in, focus on collaboration, or serve as a morale booster for the staff. You might also have your team view a video together, like a TED Talk or a film on productivity, and then have a brief discussion about what they saw.
16. Paper Airplanes
This activity works best as a Zoom-based team meeting exercise. You can split up your virtual team into breakout rooms and have them work together to figure out the most efficient way to fold a paper aircraft using resources like YouTube. After five minutes, have the participants all come back from their breakout sessions so they may try out their ideas. To add some competition, have your team rate the aircraft based on how long they flew, the style, and the level of complication.
Conclusion
According to a Gallup survey, having a closely-knit work environment increases employee satisfaction by 50 percent. Remote team meetings is an excellent place to start. Trying in-person meetings a few times every year is also advisable. Your team needs to connect offline or in person.
You should try entertaining, dynamic, and engaging remote team meeting exercises to manage teams better, bring workers closer, and establish a high-performance work culture. In addition, a happy team will always be more productive, loyal, and effective.
FAQ: Remote team meeting ideas
Here are frequently asked questions about remote team meeting ideas.
What are remote team meetings?
Remote team meetings are virtual or in-person hangouts for employees that work from different locations. Remote team meeting activities work to foster an environment where employees are comfortable opening up to one another and working together.
How do you plan a remote team meeting?
When planning a remote team meeting, you should include your teammates. It helps if you ask what type of activities they prefer. If the meeting will require additional resources, ensure you order them on time.
What are the best remote team meeting ideas?
Some of the best remote team meeting ideas include Personality Quizzes, The Artist Game, and Guess the Desk. You can also have fun with creative drawing games.
