I’ve explored the topic of building a team culture among remote workers in a previous blog, but I’ve been compling even more examples of live events and asynchronous events that can build a sense of team among remote workers.
Some of the additional ideas:
Have team members share baby photos with one team member, who then shares them without identification to the team and asks them to guess who is who.
Have team members share a recipe that is either their very favorite food or is representative of their culture. Randomly assign different team members each others’ recipes. They have two weeks or a month to make the dish, take a photo of the end result, and get ready to share their thoughts on a particular day.
Have a non-work-related question of the week or month, such as favorite vacation spot, what their career goal when they were 8 years old was, their favorite actor, their favorite movie, etc. Questions can be personnel but not anything that any team member wouldn’t want others to know.
Have members take a photo outside somewhere – anywhere – that is not at all work related (photo in a garden, at the beach, next to a sculpture, under a tree, on a swing) and share it with each other on a particular day.
Have conversations with team members about what success will look like for themselves within a project and for an overall project.
Have team members draw the process of them working together from start of the project to finish, showing how each team member plays a role. Share these and look for similarities and differences.
Have a hat day, where everyone is supposed to wear a hat at the start of one of your video web conferences.
Be careful in that you don’t want any team building exercises that make someone feel LESS a part of the team. For instance, asking people to share wedding photos or prom photos – and there are team members that aren’t married, didn’t go to the prom, etc. Or if your team is international, remember that cultural norms can vary hugely among different team members, especially with regard to what is appropriate to talk about or take a photo of.
For more advice on working with remote volunteers, or using the Internet to support and involve volunteers, check out The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. Successfully working with people remotely is a very human endeavor that people who are amiable, understanding and thoughtful tend to excel in. Even if you are working with remote paid staff and contractors rather than volunteers, you will find this book helpful in supervising and supporting remote workers. And if you work with volunteers who are providing service primarily onsite, this book will help you to think about ways you can support those volunteers online as well, and invite them to provide service online as well.
Also see: