The old saying goes, “Teamwork makes the dream work,” but how does that apply when traditional workspaces have moved online?
Employees can find it challenging to connect with their coworkers with a screen barrier between them, but that doesn’t negate the importance of team-building activities within your workplace. Indeed, it may call for increased attention paid to ensuring positive, collaborative, and healthy professional relationships.
Whether virtual or in-person, it is crucial to set aside dedicated time for activities that allow your team to come together in ways that prioritize social bonding over work rate. The return on investment more than makes up for a few hours of lost productivity when done well.
Benefits of Virtual Team Building Activities
There are countless benefits to implementing virtual team-building activities into your workplace culture, including a greater sense of well-being and an uptick in overall motivation. Here are five reasons you should try them out:
Better Cooperation and Collaboration
People work better together when they have a sense of camaraderie. Professional collaboration is a keystone of success in competitive industries, especially when each person brings different skills to the table and their style of out-of-the-box thinking.
Collaborative efforts create a general sense of togetherness that gives rise to a sense of team-wide accountability. It’s more complex to let down coworkers you care about than those you have no connection to.
Increased Empathy
In the heat of work, with deadlines and standards to meet, it’s easy to forget that the person on the other side of your computer is a human being with families, hobbies, and sometimes, difficult circumstances.
When teammates spend time engaged in team-building activities, it opens the door for them to learn more about each other, increasing empathy for one another’s lives. When something happens that may inconvenience others, compassion and understanding helps mend bridges.
Higher Workplace Morale
Workplace satisfaction is enormous for employee retention and buy-in, which means the company sees a significant boost in overall productivity. It provides purpose and motivation, encouraging them to strive towards goals that they may have otherwise cared little about without the personal connection to their job.
Something as simple as having food delivered to each team member’s home then asking everyone to dine together on camera can create a sense of comfort and closeness.
Opportunities for Innovation
Creativity and innovation are critical for businesses that want to stay one step ahead of the competition. Still, it requires a team to kindle the fire and passion necessary to bring big ideas to the table. Unfortunately, virtual work can alienate employees, removing the physical proximity that often facilitates idea-sharing and curiosity amongst a team.
One idea is to give time for open-forum brainstorming sessions; you bring everyone together to build off of one another’s ideas without the pressure of a specific project or deadline in mind.
Mitigate Workplace Strife
Many workplace disagreements arise out of simple misunderstandings or failure to communicate. Teams that don’t feel connected may have trouble finding appropriate ways to express their concerns until they fester into full-on conflict.
Allowing everyone to feel safe and comfortable to voice their opposition to a particular strategy the team is pursuing gives value to each person’s opinion and may lead to insight into possible hurdles that other team members may not have noticed.
Team Building Activities Benefit Virtual Teams
If you notice your team struggling to adjust to virtual work, consider team-building activities as a means of overcoming the distance. You’ll see a difference in their willingness to take positive risks, share innovative ideas, and communicate openly with the rest of your employees.
Conclusion
Remember that team-building activities don’t have to be expensive or contrived to be meaningful. The only requirement is that it brings people together outside of the context of looming deadlines or unmet quotas. Instead, the priority is placed on genuine human connection between professional collaborators.