Zoom meetings have become a vital part of our work lives and oftentimes can feel long. While we can’t get rid of these virtual gatherings, we can make them less stressful and boring by utilizing Zoom icebreakers.

Below, we share some fun and educational Zoom icebreakers you can use for your next virtual event to keep the team hooked.

“Would You Rather” questions for coworkers

Done right, “Would You Rather” type of questions have the potential to turn long, dull meetings into lively discussions and eliminate Zoom fatigue. Have a moderator or team lead chip in at regular intervals with these types of questions - usually with two options for members to choose from. Teams that find it hard to organize questions can use Bar None Games to help them create these types of questions for members. You can set these questions to pop up at the beginning, middle, or end of a meeting. Some example questions:

❖    Would you rather have the power to talk to animals or understand every language in the world?

❖    Would you rather give up the internet for two months or give up bathing for two months?

❖    Would you rather have an office where you could wear pajamas to work or work in a really fancy office?

Vary these questions between different themes, including sports, cities, food, music, travel, work, family, and pop culture, among others.

Home or work bucket list (or both!)

This Zoom icebreaker should be fun to create and give the team the chance to learn more about their colleagues. Let each member create a bucket list of things they’d like to do which can all be done from home (or the office, or both). Then ask them to show their lists one after the other - you could select winners based on the pairs with the most bucket lists in common. Companies that wish to take this up a notch can also get the winning pair one thing on their lists. This Zoom icebreaker can go beyond the home or work to include anything that a team member would want to have or do, whether it’s the food they want to try or the places they want to visit.

Funniest work from home fails

Knowing that someone doesn’t always have the perfect day sometimes can be a great way to be vulnerable and share a laugh together. Especially during most of our first times working from home, there’s bound to be a lot of funny work-from-home fails that would be funny to share. Encourage members to open up about their online meeting funny mistakes and share their experiences. In fact, it reminds members they are not alone when it comes to funny or stupid remote work fails.

Breakout rooms with interesting topics

Select interesting topics that, if possible, are not about work. Divide the team into smaller groups of four or five, ask each team to pick an interesting topic of their choice, and then discuss and the key takeaways and observations as a broader group. This is an excellent Zoom icebreaker, especially for large teams who want to build more meaningful connections while helping some members unearth their creative thinking capabilities.

Guess the online chat acronym

We all have moments when we had to search online for the meaning of a chat acronym. From SMH to LMFAO, there are so many of them, and new ones pop up all the time. Teams can use Bar None Games to create trivia or multiple-choice questions using these acronyms and ask members to guess their meanings. These are fun exercises and should help any team reduce Zoom fatigue and tension.

Break the ice for your team in various ways

Just because they are popularly referred to as ‘Zoom Icebreakers’ doesn’t mean they are limited to only the Zoom video conferencing tool. Whichever tool your team uses, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Skype, or GoToMeeting, these icebreakers can help you lighten up your meetings.