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Virtual Employee Engagement Activity Ideas You Have to Try in 2025
Published on:
December 5, 2024
Updated on:
December 6, 2024
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It's incredibly important to keep your teams connected and morale high in the modern times, especially with remote work on the rise. That is why virtual employee engagement has become such an important player in cultivating a collaborative, and productive workplace.
Whether you're managing a global team or navigating hybrid work-setting, the free virtual employee engagement activities in this article are bound to make a big impact on your teams. So without further ado let's get to it!
Virtual coffee breaks are a good engagement idea in terms of cultivating casual conversation and encouraging the development of personal connections to improve team dynamics. Such breaks will benefit your workforce in the sense that they will reduce the sense of isolation and hopefully replace it with a sense of belonging and camaraderie instead.
You can start by setting up regular 15-30 minutes coffee break sessions and set time aside specifically in your team's calendar and designate space for it. You can utilize tools like Microsoft Teams and pair participants randomly or in group settings to organize team-bonding.
Employee recognition is on the top of the list of things that motivate a workforce. Therefore, showing appreciation to your employees for their hard work is a great idea to enhance virtual employee engagement. Incorporate a rewards program into your virtual activities and foster a sense of achievement, benefiting your employees and organization alike.
In order to implement a recognition program of your own, the best way to go about it is to utilize the right program. What better program than Teamflect? Teamflect is an all-in-one performance management platform designed for Microsoft Teams and has such a robust recognition feature.
With Teamflect's recognition feature you can;
Online games are a great way to engage your workforce in a virtual setting. Trivia games or other gamified events will help foster collaboration and provide a fun way to break the ice. They help strengthen team bonds as well as create friendly competition.
Choose a platform that will help you carry out your virtual employee engagement efforts like Kahoot or Quizizz. Within platforms like that you can host trivia contests during scheduled engagement sessions and make sure to incorporate diverse topics to ensure inclusivity.
Like online trivia games, virtual escape rooms can be a good way to gamify employee engagement efforts. They also help promote problem solving, teamwork, innovation and camaraderie. They are especially ideal for large companies with various locations around the world.
Partner with other providers that support virtual escape rooms or set up DIY challenges through documents and clues. In that case you can better reflect your team's, organization's and even industry's characteristics to add a more personal touch to your engagement activity.
Keeping focus on wellness challenges can promote friendly competition as well as employee wellbeing at the same time. In that case, these challenges will enhance productivity and team morale. Wellness challenges are especially a good choice since they show your workforce that you care and value them as people.
Organize challenges that involve activities like yoga, meditation, step, or even mindfulness in virtual engagement sessions. Set goals to define how the challenge's tone and celebrate accomplishments along the way to keep your people motivated.
Encouraging and empowering your employees to share their know-how will be a peer-to-peer teambuilding experience, encouraging bonding, camaraderie and collaboration. Such sessions can be tailored in terms of professional growth objectives or explore personal interests to further enhance the effectiveness of these activities.
Host monthly sessions for example where members can share their skills with their peers, anything ranging from graphic design to cooking. Use the chance of virtual employee engagement activities to match with a skill-sharing session for increased effectiveness.
Themed virtual happy hours are exactly what they sound like. They will help create a relaxed and social environment for your employees to engage with their peers, enjoy themselves and have fun. Such spaces cultivate a sense of belonging, and promote bonding.
Choose a theme that you believe would be enjoyable for your team. For example, it could be 80's Nights or Tropical Getaway and stick to the theme when implementing games or other activities. Games like charades will help keep the spirit of the event alive.
Book clubs area rather relaxed and cozy event and implementing one in your employee engagement routine as an organization will help connect your workforce as people and not just co-workers. This addition to your engagement efforts will enhance communication as well as critical thinking, returning as a productivity benefit.
Create a specific channel or chat for your book club and organize monthly sessions to host meetings. Other than the fact that it is virtual, it will work as simply as any other book club, contributing to an engaging experience for those interested.
Creative events such as craft workshops can help reduce stress and promote mindfulness and wellbeing. They're a practical and effective way for virtual employees to connect with diverse teams through a similar interest.
Send out materials regarding the DIY workshops and choose relatively easy crafts that employees can enjoy or simply engage in using household items. Share the final creations with teams and recognize the results collectively.
Similar to employee wellbeing challenges, fitness classes can be an excellent tool to integrate physical activities into the workday, promoting better health and morale all in one go.
You could consider partnering with fitness instructors to offer virtual yoga, Zumba or pilates classes. Use your virtual platform to track participation and receive feedback on the progress.
Cooking brings everyone together and who doesn't love food right? Hosting cooking competitions will not only promote friendly competition but allow employees to share their talents, interests and foster a space of team-building and belonging.
How a virtual Chopped-style competition and ask your workforce to submit pictures of their cooking. Utilize feedback tools such as surveys to hold a virtual poll and determine the winners, celebrating the results as a team.
Creating a podcast for your team where the workforce can share their perspectives will help cultivate a sense of community, and imbed the sense of belonging, promoting collaboration.
Provide certain guidelines with regards to the podcast to preserve a professional setting regardless of the fact that this is mainly to engage employees. Then, share the platform via your communication tools and regularly update your workforce on the team-building initiatives.
Scavenger hunts are a great way to encourage problem solving and collaboration within the team, gamifying your virtual employee engagement efforts. That way, it's fun and engaging, which is the point right?
Organize a list of items or tasks that your employees are supposed to find or complete during a video call in the designated time you've assigned beforehand. Use online tools to track the progress of the hunt and declare and celebrate the winners. You might even consider putting a reward for the winners to receive by the end.
Webinars are a great way to engage your workforce in terms of professional development. Such growth activities demonstrate that the organization cares about the future of the employees and are invested in them long-term.
Determine areas of improvement for your workforce depending on their interests and growth areas. From there, invite guest speakers or external experts to share their wisdom with your team. Use your virtual engagement platforms to gather feedback and follow-up on the effectiveness on your events.
A dedicated awards night will give you your very own "The Office" moment with your team. Recognitions of any form will help boost morale of your workforce and an awards night is the perfect opportunity.
You can host an annual, bi-annual or quarterly awards ceremony, held virtually via your employee engagement platforms. You can also play fun games to further enhance the effects of the night.
Polls and quizzes can be a quick and easy way to engage the workforce and a simple, minimalistic way to foster engagement. They are especially useful for teams that wish to utilize their time most effectively and without too much commitment due to time constraints.
Utilize survey tools like Teamflect to implement polls and quizzes easily and seamlessly in your workflow. Easy your way into employee engagement no matter how much resource you can allocate to it or not. You can also implement them into other engagement activities to break the ice.
Cultural exchange events are especially engaging and promote diversity and inclusion while allowing the workforce to share and celebrate their heritage, culture, and traditions in the process.
Ask your employees to present something regarding their own culture and something unique to their experience in their experience of the world. You can create a shared folder of photos, stories or recipes to promote the longevity of this experience.
Holding regular town hall with open questions and answers sessions are great way to encourage your workforce to share feedback and give them a platform to make their voices heard. This way, your employees can feel valued, heard and expreience increased job satisfaction.
Use your virtual engagement platform to host monthly or quarterly town hall sessions. Allow your workforce to submit questions in advance to address them better and ensure that a variety of voices are heard in the town hall once conducted.
Virtual employee engagement is not just a choice but a necessity in the modern workplace. We don't need to highlight the importance of employee engagement if you've made it this far in the article, but we must say that without meaningful employee engagement strategies, it is practical impossible to thrive long-term..
Leverage the powers of these virtual employee engagement tools and incorporate them into your workflow for boosted employee morale, higher job satisfaction and a workplace culture that thrives through collaboration and harmony!
An all-in-one performance management tool for Microsoft Teams
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