Creating links among people and maintaining them between people who work in different places is at this point in time a very common situation in almost every company.
It is clear that it is one thing to create an atmosphere of trust and a feeling of belonging and complicity between employees when they are all in the same building for most of the time.
However, does the situation become very complicated when some or all of them operate virtually and rarely (if ever!) have the opportunity to interact in person with colleagues? The human being is relational and building and maintaining a valid professional and personal relationship exclusively online is one of the enabling factors for your team’s success. Think that the majority of remote employees report never having had a team building session.
Unfortunately, there are no “one size fits all” recipes (remember that human resources are the most difficult and unpredictable to manage), but some virtual activities that you find below are a good starting point for growth.
- Leave it to the “background noise”. When working remotely, team members do not have the opportunity to speak too much with their neighbour or discuss in person what they will be doing over the weekend. It’s that kind of personal chat, however, that helps employees connect with each other. Remote teams must have available a portion of time for “small talk” just like for group meetings. As a stimulus, try without being invasive to spend a couple of minutes at the beginning of each meeting discussing personal updates, then leave it to them to continue outside working time.
- Sharing is caring. Try to work on activities that enable linking people. For example, as an inclusion activity, send an email to the group with an icebreaker question not related to the workplace. Ask everyone to answer with a reply to all so that everyone can get to know each other a little more.
- Let the games begin. Encourage your team to engage in some team building activities to foster team spirit and some healthy competition. Playing together will create a relationship that will come in handy later when there is work to be done.
