15 virtual team building activities to engage your remote employees

With only 4% of employers expecting their staff to work exclusively at office locations full-time, it’s vital that our remote and hybrid team members still feel as involved in their workplace community as their in-person counterparts. That’s where team building activities come in. 

Famed for fostering strong bonds amongst participants, team building exercises are a great way for your team to take their professional relationships to the next level. Take a look at our top 15 virtual team building experiences that can help you do just that! 

Keep reading to find out…

• What a virtual team building can offer
• Some exciting virtual team building ideas
• How to encourage your team to make the most of their virtual activity 

What can virtual team building offer?

Whether you want to host a virtual team building event for a small department, or for everyone across your organisation, team building activities can have a transformational effect on the sense of community amongst your people. There’s a whole host of virtual ways to bring your people together with shared experiences, no matter where they are in the world. 

Give your remote employees the opportunity to socialise and find out more about the people they work with online each and everyday. By working together for something outside of your normal job responsibilities, this helps employees to relax into their virtual working environment and removes the barriers to communication between the team. 

Going virtual is also a great way to reduce the cost and carbon footprint of your team building activity. It also makes your event more accessible and inclusive, as people can join from anywhere and aren’t restricted by travel or cost considerations. 

These are some of our First Event favourites for virtual team building activities, but each of these ideas can be fully customised to suit your needs and tastes!

Exciting virtual team building ideas for your next event

1. Virtual sushi making class

Test your team’s culinary flair with a sushi-making class! From everything from maki to california rolls, make a range of delicious sushi using ingredients and specialist equipment delivered directly to your door. Live stream alongside a sushi chef who will guide you through creating and garnishing your insta-worthy dishes. An already unique virtual cooking experience where you can learn new skills, why not add a competitive edge and ramp up the stakes? Who takes the best sushi selfie? Who has the best roll? There’s only one way to find out!

2. A cocktail masterclass

Let’s be honest, everyone loves a cocktail. Even beer drinkers can’t resist a fruity, tiny umbrella adorned concoction. You can harness the fun of cocktail making with this bespoke team building activity. And with this option, the branding possibilities are endless! Package your cocktail deliveries in custom, branded designs, and even create a signature company cocktail. Ingredients and equipment can be sent to your guests in advance to really get excitement shaken, not stirred. These sessions allow plenty of time to interact and discuss mixing strategies during the class itself, then enjoy your cocktails together with some post class networking. 

3. Virtual race night

In this live streamed event, bring your team together to place their bets on any race happening anywhere in the world. After bookies and industry experts have shared insider exclusive tips and tricks, attendees can place their bets and gather in a virtual VIP box. With a professional compere on hand to host the event and provide entertainment for your guests throughout, a virtual race night is sure to bring that competitive spirit needed to build any team. 

4. Interactive team quizzes

There’s a reason why most of us spent every weekend in lockdown doing zoom quizzes with our friends and family: it’s because they’re just so much fun! Online quizzes are a fantastic way of testing your general knowledge whilst staying engaged with the people that matter to you, wherever they might be in the world. Want to add a unique twist to this virtual classic? Why not add a scavenger hunt element to your interactive quiz? Contestants answer questions related to commonly found household objects. It’s then up to them to work out the answer, and race off to find the object in their house. First one back to the screen with the object in-hand wins! 

5. Escape room challenge

A fantastic option for smaller team sizes, this really levels up the classic escape room format we all know and love. Your event host will be in the escape room itself, with a headset and camera conducting a live video feed to your remote quests. It’s up to your online team to solve the puzzles together, instruct their host through obstacles in order to escape within the time limit. This will really put your team strength and spirit to the challenge, requiring clear planning and communication in order to escape in time, and would be the perfect addition to any virtual conference or staff training event. 

6. The great British bake off

Not all of us are destined to enter the hallowed halls of the Bake Off tent, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t all at least get to experience a flavour of the Bake Off experience. Let your team show off their creativity and precision with a virtual Bake Off contest. Led by an experienced patisserie chef, on hand to guide your team through their spectacular bakes, this activity is great for boosting mental wellbeing as well as creating a sense of togetherness and team spirit. The taste scoring is replaced by design, presentation and techniques scores, all combined to determine who should be crowned the Bake Off winner. Baking kits are delivered directly to your teams’ doors ahead of the event, with pre-weighed ingredients to take out some of the hassle of a messy post-Bake-Off kitchen.

7. Bongo bingo

Famed for its bongo themed chaos and fun-filled carnage, the infamous Bongo Bingo event can now be enjoyed online. Never been to a Bongo Bingo event before? Imagine if your nana’s bingo night got dragged through a fancy dress store, and you’ve got yourself a night at Bongo Bingo. Prizes can be tailored to suit your audience, but MUST include the Bongo favourites like life size cardboard cutouts of Ainsley Harriet or a box of coco pops. Bring your team together Bongo style, and create hilarious memories that will last a lifetime.

8. A murder mystery experience 

No need to hop aboard the Orient Express to experience the intrigue and entertainment of a murder mystery night. In this interactive Virtual Murder Mystery Experience, guests are guided by an online host as they use their pre-delivered packs to assume their assigned game character. During the session, clues are revealed and attendees are given time to review and discuss the evidence before posing who they suspect of committing the deadly crime. All created by a professional writer, these murder mystery experiences can be customised to suit your brand. Whether its themes, evidence and characters, the only limit is your creativity. Guess the murderer, the weapon and the motive correctly and stop this killer from walking free! 

9. Chocolate challenge

This delicious team building activity is sure to bring your team together, boost morale, and leave your team with a delicious memento of their team building experience. Guided by an experienced chocolatier, guests use the finest fair-trade chocolate ingredients (sent to their doors beforehand) to craft delicious pieces. Your team will learn and master new chocolate making skills to create tasty treats, all from the comfort of their own kitchen. Turn cocoa beans into chocolate bars, and wow friends and family with your newly acquired ganache making skills.

10. Virtual festival

Say goodbye to wellies, bum bags and pop-up tents. We can bring all the fun of a festival to your team without them having to leave the house! Using our own in-house platform, we can create a jam-packed multi-day experience to extend to a global audience. We can spotlight features like:

• Virtual performances.
• Summits.
• Panels. 
• Live Streamed performances and entertainment.
• Awards.
• And more!

A virtual festival is a great format to host a product launch or wide-scale company update, putting your inspirational messages and new developments at the heart of the online action.

11. In for a penny

Inspired by the TV classic starring First Event Friend Stephen Mulhurn, In For A Penny can now be brought to your remote teams in this fun filled virtual team building activity. From guessing the value of common supermarket items, to charades with an added challenging twist, a virtual In For A Penny experience will not only bring your team together, but will add some fun and laughter to your team building. Want to really immerse your guests in the In For A Penny experience, you can even have the man himself, Mr Stephen Mulhern to host the evening!

12. Motivational speaker

A good leader is able to motivate and inspire the people in their team. But who’s on hand to motivate the motivators? Why not invigorate the leadership within your organisation by bringing in an external motivational speaker to inspire your teams. Going through a period of adversity or transition? Motivational speakers are a great way to boost your team through a period of change or difficulty. Here at First Event we have a directory of incredible guest speakers who can share their own experiences and stories to encourage and educate others on how to become the best versions of themselves. 

13. Live lounge

Time to tune those pitch perfect pipes and dust off those dad dance moves! We can bring all the atmosphere and rhythm of a live music performance to your remote teams with a virtual live lounge performance. In an exclusive live lounge set featuring an artist or performer of your choice, we can stream the live performance from our very own studio into your attendees homes. Move over Wembley arena, your guests can be entertained from the comfort of their own living rooms.

14. Through the keyhole

Channel all those nosy urges and get to know your colleagues by taking a sneak peak into their home! Get clues from each of your team members about their house, the area they live in and get the rest of your team to guess who lives where. With this virtual event, you can make it as personal or impersonal as you’d like, leaving your teams to decide if they want to share snaps of their WFH set up, or just details about the towns they live in. This is a really fun way of finding out the personal touches of your online teams. 

15. Wellbeing session

Mental health is a fundamental part of everyday life, and must be prioritised in every element of our working lives. Team building initiatives are no different. Create strong communities within your teams whilst also encouraging healthy habits with a virtual wellbeing session. Find the wellbeing session that suits the diverse needs of your team, and show them that you care, even from a distance. We can arrange online fitness workshops, tailored self care packages to be sent to your staff, or  3D google cards to take your team to a yoga session on a lush verdant hillside in Thailand. To show your people just how much you care, help them to take care of themselves with an online wellbeing team building session. 

Has our menu of virtual team building activities wet your appetite? Got some questions about how we can bring these events to life for you and your team? Get in touch with the First Event team here, after all, we’re the experts!

How to encourage team building virtually

1. Keep it interactive! 

By creating more opportunities for interaction with things like chat tools, polls and quizzes, you’ll keep attendees engaged. 

2. Make sure it’s accessible.  

You want your guests to be able to navigate their way through the virtual space, and so any virtual platforms you need for your team building event needs to facilitate this. Check that the language used on any visual material, fonts and displays can easily be read and understood on virtual presentations or other material, for example. 

3. Have the right technical support on hand 

Guests, speakers or attendees might not be familiar with the tech involved in a virtual event, and they might need a helping hand to steer them through the experience. Creating and distributing a guide beforehand with FAQs means that issues can be addressed more smoothly. 

4. Get the timing right 

If you’ve got people dialling in from all over the world, it’s worth considering how the time of your event translates to the different time zones of your guests. Also double-checking the date for any conflicts in each area will be useful to gain maximum attendance.

5. Shout about it on social media! 

Why not promote your event on your social media channels to keep team interaction buzzing? Streaming elements of your team building event on facebook live, using hashtags, or even live tweeting the event is a great way to gain feedback and encourage attendee engagement. 

For any more information on these virtual team building activities, including pricings, please head to our contact page. We're more than happy to discuss any bespoke requirements you may have.