What are virtual team building activities?

Virtual team building activities are exercises, challenges, or group games that managers or leaders use to build bonds amongst their team. Think of it as a trust fall, but with your co-worker. Virtual team building activities are specifically facilitated via platforms such as Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams. This is a great way to build camaraderie amongst team members who may not be located in the same place. Just because you’re not sitting physically next to a person doesn’t mean that human connection and interaction isn’t just as important, especially when your team is working together closely.

The top virtual team building events

As a remote-first team that specializes in creating engaging, high-energy team building events, our team has tested and tried a multitude of virtual team building events. Here are our favorites - some of which are paid, and some of which are free!

1. Virtual team building trivia activity

Virtual trivia is absolutely one of our favorite games ever to play. It’s the perfect virtual happy hour activity, as it can be easily done in 60-minutes, and it incorporates team-based competition. It’s very easy to customize for groups of all types. You can choose what categories are best for your group and the content will be curated so that your whole group feels included.

2. Virtual Pictionary (free!)

For groups that are looking for a fun variety game, Pictionary is great for people with all different types of skill levels. For virtual Pictionary, we like using Skribbl.io which allows you to compete with people located in all different places and is free. You can invite up to 12 people to play in a private room and all of their events come preloaded with a fun variety of words that you can choose from. Let’s see who the Picasso of your group is!

3. Online scavenger hunt

We’ve seen the “at-home” scavenger hunts where you're searching around your house for objects, but when we say Online Scavenger Hunt, we mean a hunt that’s actually done on the internet. Clues are laid throughout and you have to use your greatest Google-sleuthing skills in order to get to the final destination. Points are given out based on how far you get in the scavenger hunt, and if every team actually makes it to the end, then the winner goes to whoever discovers the final destination fastest. So go quickly - it’s a race against time!

4. Virtual Codenames (free!)

Codenames is a multi-player word association game that originated as a card game. When the pandemic hit, an online version of Codenames appeared and it’s perfect for virtual teams. In order to play, you’d split your group up into two even teams. Then, each team will nominate one leader who will take turns with the other team’s leader in saying words to help their team guess the correct words. This virtual team building event involves collaboration and true teamwork in order for a group to succeed.

5. Virtual team building bingo (music, movies and more!)

We’ve all probably played classic Bingo, where numbers are called out, you tick them off, and you wait until you hit the BINGO winning pattern. Our Bar None Bingo is NOT your grandma’s bingo! Our bingo is multimedia and interactive, with icebreakers, music, movies, pictures and more. Let me tell you when I say that you’ve never played a Bingo game like this before.

6. Virtual Scattergories (free!)

Scattergories is a game that brings me back to childhood. It’s a game that’s inclusive for everyone and because it’s time-based, it also involves a lot of competition. With the online Scattergories tool, you can easily choose what categories you want to play to ensure that it’s a round that fits perfectly for your group. Get your brainstorming ready, as this virtual team building activity is sure to have people racking their brains.

7. Interactive Ice breakers 

Ice breakers are an incredible way to get to know your team, whether they’re people that you’ve known for years or for just days. It can be hard to figure out what’s the best ice breaker activity or set of ice breaker questions for a group, but our interactive icebreakers have a uniquely collaborative spin, where you’ll not only get to know your small group better, but you’ll also find out what you have in common with your group. We offer both 30 minute and 60 minute sessions of interactive ice breakers, both of which offer multiple breakout room sessions and you’ll get new team members in your small breakout room group each time.

8. Virtual Jeopardy

We all had dreams of going on Jeopardy and having Alex Trebek (RIP) lead us through some mind-bending Jeopardy trivia competition questions. Virtually, while our Game Show event does not have Alex Trebek involved, it does have a high-energy live host and offers fierce competition amongst your team. This is hands down one of the best events for trivia and Jeopardy lovers.

9. Ticket to Ride mobile app

A favorite strategic board game has gone digital! In your mobile phone app store, you can download an application where you can invite your friends to compete. We are big lovers of this game and being able to play remotely with our team mates has been a very fun way to spice up a virtual happy hour. You can have everyone pull up the app on their phones and then pull up a Zoom meeting at the same time to see everyone’s reactions and also leave a space for some trash talking.

10. Virtual Family Feud

Family Feud is an iconic television show that is guaranteed to get your team’s competitive spirits high. Team players will have to answer questions based on what they believe are the most popular answers to survey questions. In our virtual Family Feud event, we’ve surveyed 100 people a variety of questions, and players will work together as teams to decide collectively what they think is the top answer. Let’s see how well you know your peers!

11. Virtual team building craft kits

Creating crafts can feel quite therapeutic to many people, and it’s a great tangible way to have a creative release. There are many different options for you to buy a craft kit for your team and you can even book a virtual crafting class. Whether it’s making a homemade candle, learning how to embroider a fun design, or learning how to watercolor, the options are endless for the types of craft activities you can do with your co-workers.

12. Wine tasting

One of our favorite virtual vendors has been In Good Taste, which offers wine flights and virtual tastings. If you have a group of 6 or more doing the wine flights, they’ll offer you a 60 minute virtual tasting experience free of charge. They’ll mail the kits to you and you can easily schedule a date and a time for the tasting experience. Each flight bottle represents half a bottle, so you’ll want to be careful about finishing everything, just like at a real tasting!

13. Wheel of Fortune

Wheel of Fortune is another TV game show classic, and with our Wheel of Fun game, you’ll be brought back to your favorite days of guessing phrases with the hint of letters on a page. We give it a unique spin, by having the hint be a word puzzle, so your mind will be spinning. It’s a team-based activity for work that you’ve never seen before!

14. Virtual team building quiz competition (free!)

Sporcle is a favorite virtual quiz provider that has been around for decades. For every single category that you can think of, there’s likely to be a quiz. Get together with your team and find a fun topic that everyone on your team is interested in. Then, start a timer and have your whole team compete to see who can finish the quiz first (and as accurately as possible).

15. Word Puzzle

Our word puzzle game tests how creative you can be with a certain number of letters on a page and how many words you can make with them. In this team-based competition, the only way for your team to come out on top is to work together with everyone who’s in your small group. In a race against the clock, you and your team will be racking your brain to come up with creative words.

16. Virtual improv workshop activity for work

Improv is an amazing way to get people out of their comfort zones. For those who are more quiet, it’s a great way to learn a new exercise to break them out of their shells, and for those who are already more naturally comfortable at public speaking, it’ll allow them a chance to try something new. It fosters an ability to think fast on your feet and develop essential business skills. It’ll also improve communication amongst your team, which is a vital skill for any team that’s distributed or remote.

17. Virtual escape room (free!)

We all know and love the in-person escape rooms, and a virtual escape room is sure to blow your team’s minds. There are a myriad of ways that technology has developed to allow for an immersive, interactive experience to create a huge puzzle challenge to escape a room. You’ll need to work together with a team to keep track of clues, tie them all together, and unlock the secret to escape.

18. In-office or in-house scavenger hunt (free!)

While remote and distributed teams may not be able to participate together in a scavenger hunt all around a city, they can certainly search around their homes or office to try and find items that match a list. To facilitate this, come up with a list of items that would require a bit of searching to be able to find in a house or an office. Then, split your group up into teams, share with them the list, and start the timer to see which team can find everything first. Encourage teams to take pictures of everything they find and share it with everyone on the Zoom.

19. Virtual karaoke (free!)

Ask team members to submit what their favorite songs are, and gather it into a YouTube playlist. Have the playlist set on random rotation. Using Zoom’s Share Music functionality or Share Screen functionality, you can easily have the music videos streaming amongst your team virtually, and you can use the Spotlight feature to highlight each member as they sing along. Here’s a hint - make sure you use the “lyrics version” for each song, so that the lyrics are on the screen for ease of following along!

20. TedTalk Powerpoint night (free!)

Have you seen the TIktok trend of having a Powerpoint night? Essentially, each person picks an idea that’s fun (not work related!) and creates a Powerpoint presentation on it. This is an amazing way for each individual to highlight their own interests and areas of expertise that may not come out in a typical work setting. Ideas include: which reality TV show each co-worker would thrive on and why, predictions of who Pete Davidson will date next, recasting your co-workers as Disney characters, and more. Think of this like each person’s chance to give a mini TedTalk.

Why is virtual team building important?

There’s been proven research that says that connected and bonded teams are more productive and creative. Team building increases collaboration and fosters trust. This Harvard article on the science of building great teams specifically dives into how team building can improve communication amongst team members, which is the single most important factor in how effective a group is in working together.  There are a lot of team building activities that focus on communication, and including team-based trivia, which requires teams to communicate together and collaborate in order to answer questions.

How do you host virtual team building for large groups?

Many of the same team building activities that smaller groups love can also be adapted for large groups. At Bar None Games, all of our team building events can be adapted for groups as small as 4 up to groups of 1,000 or more. Our events always involve splitting people up into smaller teams, so even for large groups, individuals are still able to have time in smaller, intimate groups, as well as spend time with the larger group. This is important in order to be able to foster close connections.

What team activity can be done virtually?

Our favorite virtual team activities include trivia, mini games, bingo, interactive icebreakers, scavenger hunts, game show competitions, and more. We’ve listed more favorites above.

What virtual team building vendors should I use?

When it comes to tech stack, we love using Zoom or Google Meet for video conferencing. They have lots of great features that make the experience feel interactive. We also like using Miro as a tool where your team members can collaborate. 

And of course, beyond just a tech stack, hith a professional vendor, you won’t even remember that you’re not in-person with your co-workers! Bar None Games is one of the top-ranked team building vendors and offers a variety of live-hosted team building events. We also shared above our other favorite team building activities and vendors.

Should I do virtual team building on Zoom?

Yes, Zoom is one of the top video conferencing platforms and has tons of great features to enable virtual team building. Features that we love include breakout rooms, audio sharing, chat, polls, and more. These all make virtual team building interactive and help to facilitate the team collaboration.