team building activities for remote team [closed]

Question

I have started a new job as a software team lead, the team is remote in another continent and time zone.

What are good team building activities to do remotely?

Im thinking like some online game, or webinar?.

Cheers

Answer 1

I'm a fan of using a web conference with video to highlight the team member's individual work environments. Kind of like an MTV Cribs-type virtual tour get together that allows each team member to showcase where they work and to interact with their teammates through stories and questions about their work environment. We do this every so often (really whenever we add a new member) and it's actually a ton of fun. 5-10 minutes for each person to use their cam to show people where they work. Some pretty funny quirks seem to surface, which brings some levity and laughter to the conversation.

For everyday type stuff, we have a #random internal slack channel where people post funny/weird/interesting stuff to discuss.

Answer 2

From the university courses and companies I was at remotely / with some distance, it was common to use a Facebook Group from where we all would connect and discuss relevant content (updates from the university/company, auctions, contests (chess, cooking, ....), discussions about the general approach to solving problems, etc.). The pattern I could see is that here is not required in moment interaction. For instances, auctions would last 1 week.

If you want to communicate more real-time, having a Whatsapp group fixes the lack of the previous suggestion but the number of persons is generally lower. This is nice to share pictures/gifs/ memes with each other, for example.

I've also tried plug.dj to listen to music together but generally speaking people stopped using it after 1-3 weeks as it was requiring more effort to use it than the value itself.

Answer 3

random slack channel or something like that always works.

it takes time for people to get drawn in but it's the best way for people to get to know each other.

we share news, memes, discuss random stuff and etc.

Answer 4

There are apps that help you know people from your company by asking questions. I.E. "know your company", allows your team to ask other members about their hobbies, past-times, side projects, etc. And that is a way to discover common topics among your team and discuss them better on random channels.

Another way is to invite your team to share topics they are interested in and give "talks" to everyone else. I.E. in my company, we do that every last Friday of the month and stream the talk to all team members. This allows us to find solutions to problems in the process, to talk about random topics we are interested in (like finances, video games, etc).