From Quarterly Christmas to bonuses, there are many ways to increase engagement with remote employees. We have collated ready to use ideas and templates for you.
How would you motivate your team to work from home?
When employees work from home, one of the lacking elements is basic social interaction with colleagues. You don’t have a quick “hello” in the morning or lunchtime together. Instead, you need to schedule a time for socializing and engagement activities.
How do I make my employees feel connected?
The key to helping make employees feel connected is to give them time and space to be people. Your people want to work for you, and want to do work projects; they also want to hang out, make friends and get to know people. Create space for personal relationships at work and you will see a measurable increase in employee engagement.
How do you make virtual team meetings fun?
A simple rule of thumb to make virtual team meetings fun is to allocate 20% of the time to fun engagement activities and connection opportunities. For example, in a virtual meeting scheduled for 60 minutes, you would allocate about 12 minutes to the fun. During this time you an do virtual team building icebreaker questions, play quick online team games and more.
What are virtual employee engagement activities?
Virtual employee engagement activities are any activities, games and initiatives designed to intentionally influence remote employee engagement. For example, Quarterly Christmas and Spreadsheet Pixel Art are two unique activities for engaging remote teams.
How do you keep virtual employees engaged?
There are various methods to keep virtual employees engaged. For example, you can invest time and/or money in virtual team building activities to help improve relationships with co-workers. Those relationships have a strong correlation with virtual employee engagement. You can also provide recognition through verbal and written praise, and financial compensation.
8 ideas for virtual team engagement activities
Quarterly Christmas
Chances are you had a budget for team activities and catering for your team, perhaps even for a Christmas event. Take this budget and redirect it to engage the team through out the year. Consider a quarterly Christmas to send holiday cheer to virtual team members throughout the year.
For the package, you can send simple tech gear like upgraded chargers, books or movie passes. The magic is less in the items chosen and more in the act of sending; it is fun to get surprise packages in the mail.
Spreadsheet Pixel Art
When you day dream about spreadsheet software, you probably think about formulas and calculations like I do. However, spreadsheets are a powerful tool that you can even use for art that emulates Picasso, da Vinci, and Monet.
Enter, Spreadsheet Pixel Art, a fun activity you can do with remote teams to increase engagement. Spreadsheet Pixel Art can be a collaborative game, a competition, an art show or anything else you want it to be. Whatever you choose, Spreadsheet Pixel Art will deliver in fun “together-time” for you and your online team.
Here is a free template you can use to get started: Spreadsheet Pixel Art Template.
Bonus Money + Thank You
Celebrate wins. Despite the theory that money doesn’t always motivate people, in difficult times where it likely that a team member may have a family member on furlough or may have lost their job. In times of uncertainty, expected gift cards can go along way to helping people out.
Look for opportunities and milestones to say thank you. Link it to a personalized card, sharing the specifics that you are celebrating. Receiving a small bonus gift card, combined with the expression of gratitude is a powerful motivator. Team members feel appreciated, engaged and ready to continue the battle.
You can create that same motivation with awarding bonuses and sharing gratitude online. You can easily send digital gift cards or one in the mail. Try this engagement technique once, and you will see how powerful it can be.
Virtual Icebreaker Questions
You can quickly increase engagement in any virtual meeting by including icebreaker questions like “tea or coffee?” and “where is your dream location to work from?”
Check out our list of our free resources here for more inspiration, plus recommendations on how to effectively use these prompts in a virtual meeting.
Random theme days
Pick a theme. It can be anything, from Harry Potter to Christmas. And have everyone on your team dress accordingly for your virtual meeting.
To make this easier for you, here are some templates that you can use to communicate the theme.
Follow the recipe.
Select a simple recipe made from ingredients that can be found in a standard pantry. Be sure to check with team members for allergies and select a suitable recipe accordingly.This can be a great activity that leads into lunch time or end of week virtual drinks.
Ideas for baking could be as simple as
- Pancakes
- Cake in a mug
Surprise team gifts such as T shirts, and note books.
When team members wear their t shirts, they feel more connected with the rest of the team. Wearing something which they know represents a whole team and not just themselves as individuals can definitely make them act accordingly.
You can mix it up with humor. Check out these for ideas. Click on the image for the link.
Ted-Style Talks
About five years ago, Ted Talks took the world by storm. Led by Ted, the people of the world became enamoured with data, body language, great leadership and other topics. For this remote engagement activity, recruit your team members to give their own Ted-Style Talks.
Here’s how it works:
- Have each of your team members list the weird expertise they have, which could range from fourth year calculus to the world’s best chocolate chip cookie recipes.
- Support each team member in preparing a simple slideshow and talk. Five minutes is enough.
- At the beginning or end of your virtual meetings, have one team member lead a Ted-Style Talk.
- Allow an extra two to three minutes for Q&A.
You can continue on until all team members have given a talk. This format is excellent to help boost team engagement during virtual happy hours because people are interested in their colleague’s personal stories and expertise.
In conclusion…
Investing in virtual employee engagement activities is an important part of virtual team building, and ensuring job satisfaction while working from home.
You don’t need perfect employee engagement ideas, or the exact right virtual team building activities, you just need to get started. Even allocating five minutes at the beginning of a conference call to employee engagement can make a big difference.
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