Remote Team Building Without Drama and Trauma: How to Unite a Team Online

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Understanding and support are essential for smooth teamwork in any team. In fact, 97% of employees believe that a lack of effective communication leads to poor project outcomes. Add to that the challenges of burnout, human touch, differing opinions, and achieving success can feel daunting. So, how do you fix it?

Team building is a “lifeline” that can unite remote teams, foster friendly connections, and strengthen corporate culture. But how do you organize it remotely? What strategies work best for different teams? And which formats can you adopt for your company? This article dives into all these questions.

Why remote team building is especially relevant

In an office setting, employees can interact face-to-face, but remote workers only know each other through usernames, profile pictures, and tiny video call windows. This often leads to feelings of isolation from the team.

For instance, a PsychTests survey revealed that 41% of professionals dislike remote work due to limited social interactions. Insufficient communication with colleagues can negatively impact morale — feelings of isolation and a lack of support can lower job satisfaction and overall mood. Even the most loyal and motivated employees might start exploring vacancies in other companies or lose engagement. And as we know, team engagement can either quadruple a company’s profit or significantly hinder its performance.

Additionally, 36% of managers identify teamwork as the biggest challenge for remote employees. Remote teams need extra tools for informal communication and forming trust. Team building can help! Online team-building formats offer teams the chance to:

• Enhance communication and collaboration skills.
• Learn more about each other and build friendships.
• Stimulate idea-sharing and brainstorming (e.g., incorporating brainstorming elements into activities), and more.

But there’s a catch: not all team members enjoy such activities. Additionally, even the most creative team-building initiatives can fall flat if unresolved conflicts or major issues exist within the team. Team building won’t eliminate burnout, fix a negative perception of the company, or address dissatisfaction with salaries. These issues require transparent communication and other management tools before introducing team-building activities.

7+ ideas for online team building for remote IT teams

Engaging in activities and games is one of the most effective ways to unite remote teams. Here are some creative ideas for online team building:

Virtual games for remote employees

No, we’re not suggesting a Dota 2 marathon (though, if your team loves it, go ahead!). Instead, consider organizing an online escape room with themes like space exploration or inspired by series like “Black Mirror” or “Love, Death & Robots.” The team works together to solve puzzles and escape.

For example, IT company MobiDev held 99 online events a year, with 70% participation. The team-building tradition has taken root, and now employees regularly use video calls to communicate with colleagues. For example, employees play Miro, trying different roles and completing tasks together. One of the team-building events lasted 5.5+ hours — the team played an online game with their colleagues’ childhood photos and guessed who the photo belonged to. Then, the employees also guessed songs by emoji and planned the next memology quiz.

Small team-building traditions to integrate into daily work

The Random Question Icebreaker game is an exciting example we’ve already mentioned.

At the beginning of joint meetups, everyone asks one random question from the list. This will help the team get to know each other better. You can use a free question generation service or make up your own ones. Alternatively, you can use Random coffee. This is essentially an online analog of a water cooler talk. It’s a time for light conversations on non-work topics in Zoom, Skype, or a corporate platform over a cup of coffee. You can use the special Random Coffee service or organize meetings yourself.

Online challenges

Activities like a 30-day running challenge, online fitness tournaments, or quick exercise breaks improve the health of IT employees who sit at the computer for long periods of time. The exercises not only improve physical health but also foster team connections. At the very least, you’ll have something to discuss during small talks at the beginning of the daily meetings.

Internal clubs and webinars

It is an opportunity for each team member to share their experience, introduce themselves, and open up to employees from a new perspective. This increases the level of involvement and friendly atmosphere. IT specialists can be invited to such meetings to develop certain competencies.

For example, at ITExpert, we regularly hold recruiter club meetings in a TED Talk format. Everyone — from leads to juniors — can prepare their presentation, sharing their experiences with specific job searches, challenges they’ve faced, new sourcing tools, or approaches to IT Headhunting. At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, we even invited a psychologist to discuss emotional resilience in stressful conditions.

Online book club

Here’s how to organize such a club: once a month, the team gathers on a video call to discuss a book and choose the next one to read. This allows colleagues to engage in conversations on various topics, such as astrophysics, the challenges of colonizing Mars, or whether PHP is truly becoming obsolete while also building more trusting relationships. The top professional books among IT specialists, according to DOU, include:

• Programming Principles: Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann.
• Management and Culture: The Culture Map by Erin Meyer.
• DevOps: The Site Reliability Workbook by Betsy Beyer et al.
• Testing: A Practitioner’s Guide to Software Test Design by Copeland L.

Online hackathon

A hackathon is an event where specialists from various departments collaborate intensively to solve a specific problem. A collective task or project introduces new challenges and goals for remote employees. Such an activity allows everyone to showcase their skills and apply their professional expertise in practice.

Volunteering and social initiatives

Team-building activities with a meaningful mission often resonate deeply with teams. Together, you can take small steps to make a significant impact, for example:

• Develop a mini-course to raise funds for supporting the Territorial Defense Forces (TDF) or the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU).
• Create, design, and publish books for orphaned children.
• Offer free IT mentoring for internally displaced persons.

How to plan remote team building

To organize remote team building effectively, you need to stay in touch with employees, understand their interests, and build the entire process on principles of mutual support. Preparation for team-building activities follows similar guidelines. To avoid pitfalls, stick to these simple tips:

• Define your goal: Why does your team need team building? Is it to improve collaboration and communication, boost morale, or foster growth and development?

• Choose a format and agree on a budget: After clarifying the goal, the next step is selecting the format for your team-building event. Options include online quests, remote team games, virtual challenges, or book clubs. If in doubt, consult with your team and brainstorm for solutions.

• Create a schedule: Decide on a date and time that suits your team. Draft a detailed event schedule and inform participants in advance.

• Select a platform: Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and other online tools work well for team-building activities requiring extensive discussions.

• Prepare in advance: Organize presentations, write instructions, outline rules, and involve speakers or trainers. This ensures your team-building event is well-executed.

• Gather feedback: Survey participants afterward to find out whether they enjoyed the format, what changes they’d suggest, and any new ideas or offers they might have. Use anonymous feedback to evaluate the effectiveness of the team-building event.

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Organizing a team-building event requires active involvement from the entire team to achieve meaningful results. For employees, it’s an opportunity to learn more about their colleagues, find like-minded peers, develop new skills, and take a break from the monotony of remote work. For leaders, it’s a chance to foster trust, build stronger connections within the team, and better understand their needs and expectations.