Fun Ways to Keep Virtual Teams Motivated

With so many offices working remotely all over Australia in the past two years, keeping virtual teams engaged and motivated is an ongoing challenge businesses are facing. Enter: virtual team building activities. With many of the traditional team building options thrown out the window, virtual team building activities are the way of the future. And even as restrictions ease, many workers are choosing to continue working from here, which means these options are here to stay.

There’s no need to fret, however. There are plenty of ways to keep your staff fit and firing in the age of working from home, and to help you navigate this WFH business, we have a few pro-tips on how to keep your team motivated and maintain that positive workplace culture that’s taken so long to foster.

Virtual teams need face time

Although literal face time might be off the cards when your team works remotely, technology provides. Keeping your workplace wellbeing firing on all cylinders requires people to remember their co-workers are just that: people. With your staff all separated, it’s crucial to utilise Zoom meetings for more than just the essentials. A good tip if you’re looking at enhancing your health and wellbeing in the workplace is to implement daily catchups. By offering your staff a chance to chat in a relatively informal setting, you not only succeed in helping them break up the workday, but it adds an element of routine and structure into their mornings.

One of the hardest things to do when working from home is to structure your day effectively. With so many distractions, virtual teams can struggle to stay motivated and focused on the task at hand. Although daily catchups aren’t a fix-all, by offering them a fixed time every day of the working week to get some facetime with colleagues combining a social aspect with professional accountability, the culture of the workplace naturally feeds into their workday. Our pro-tip? Start social and allow your staff to share their personal stories and weekly going-ons before sliding into the order of the day.

Want to make the face time both fun and effective? We have virtual team building activities that’ll allow you to take your Zoom meetings to the next level. For instance, nearly everyone’s working for the weekend, ensuring that Friday drinks at the office are always a hit. Unfortunately, with so many offices closed, staff drinks have to take on a new life.

Thankfully, we have a growing range of virtual team builders - like our online paint and sip nights and virtual cocktail classes - so your Friday catchup can be one that everyone really looks forward to. With craft kits sent to each employee’s house prior to the virtual workshop, you can be guaranteed everyone will be shaking, sipping or painting along together like they were all in the office together, increasing the workplace wellbeing when the workplace is off-limits.

By offering your team incentive at the end of the week, you’ll collectively feel the benefits of self-motivating. Drinking in the workplace obviously has both positive and negative effects, but as everyone’s working from home, taking the office drinks into the virtual realm can actually help people relax and unwind.

Get virtual teams motivating themselves

As mentioned before, getting your staff to stay motivated from home is the challenge of this new age of working. None of us fully appreciated how difficult it actually is to work from home five days a week effectively, but now that we’re all waist-deep in it and have been doing so for some time, it’s about time we figured out how to swim through it long-term.

The truth is, everyone works differently, particularly when left to their own devices. It’s easy to maintain a positive workplace culture that keeps everyone energised and motivated when the whole team are in the office together, but when everyone’s separated, the challenge of it all really starts to emerge. We’re not all fantastic self-starters, but there are virtual team activities to help your colleagues not just stay motivated together, but also remain energised when they’re left to their own devices.

Even with all the Asana boards and Excel spreadsheets in the world, organising your time is actually a deceptively personal exercise. Different people are more efficient at different times of the day, and sometimes you need an organisational system that reflects the individual, as opposed to the team, as a whole.

Icy Icaro is one of the most sought-after Sydney artisans, and her calligraphy classes are one of our standout workshops when it comes to team building in lockdown and remote work. But it’s not actually for the calligraphy…

Her live online class, Bullet Journaling For Self Care, can show you and your team how to organise their time and workload and even aid in their mental wellbeing during this stressful time. Part planning, part self-love, Icy’s virtual team builders give your staff face time with each other, whilst still allowing them to explore their own creativity, and motivate themselves in a way that works for them. No blanket solutions; just a healthy framework that’s informed by your staff’s own creativity and needs that focus on holding onto the positive workplace wellbeing you’ve worked hard to create.

Another great way to get your team self-motivating and being as productive as they can be during their nine to five is to spark interest in a new creative hobby that they can do outside of work. Working from home can blur the boundaries between home and work life, so showing your staff that you care about work-life balance speaks volumes. You might choose to host an online candle making class, Zentangle drawing class or virtual Kintsugi lesson. Many of our creative virtual team building activities spark a new passion in your staff, which encourages them to switch off at the end of their workday and tap into something new. Because when your staff are fulfilled outside of work, they'll be even more motivated and self-starting during work hours!

A final note for virtual team builders

Every team is different, and no one knows the health and wellbeing of the workplace better than the ones that are in it. If you’ve been a team together for a while, there’s a high chance you know what many of the individual’s strengths and weaknesses are, and how to get the most out of everyone to create a truly positive workplace culture. For instance, if you’re in an office that never drinks, opting for a virtual cooking class over a mixology workplace may make for better virtual team building in lockdown.

Whatever you choose, we have a vast array of virtual team building games, experiences and workshops to both motivate and inspire, while bringing you all closer together. Workplace wellbeing has never been more important and keeping your staff engaged with their work is a challenging proposition in a pandemic. But thankfully, ensuring they get enough face time with each other and are capable of self-motivating should ensure that everyone’s wellbeing at work should stay intact, regardless of where in Australia (or beyond) you’re office is.