These activities will not only help in-house staff and management to get to know the employees better but can also be utilized strategically to assess the … Side … Keep it anonymous or let others see what everyone answered, here are some ideas of things you can poll: who has the best work-station, new company outing ideas, cutest employee pet, the best recipe when working from home, gifts to get sent home, and more. It's difficult to banter when you don't have a company water cooler to crowd around. Everyone can share personal anecdotes: whether it's an important task or an acknowledgement of something another co-worker did well, it's a great way to connect with your teammates. Open up your favorite video conferencing software and try a virtual version of this classic game in real-time. Employees in physical offices often get to enjoy their favorite nearby restaurants together at lunch. These extra steps were taken to ensure maximum employee engagement and foster a sense of belongingness with the company. To play, pair people into sets of two and set the clock for five minutes. Remote teams also miss the daily face-to-face interaction that allows for team-building in the office, so managers have to find new ways to help team members bond. 1 - Help your employees get to know each other better People emotionally invest in other people, not companies, so creating a strong bond between team members is critical. In this exercise, participants write down ideas, thoughts, or feelings they've brought to the meeting. Here are our favorite ice breaker games and trust-building activities to try with your employees for some good team bonding. This game is good for starting a brainstorming session. Everyone should upload their images to an online whiteboard in advance. Now if you ask successful companies about their work culture and employee engagement activities, you’ll often hear “we are fond of fun at work, we don’t believe in sitting at a desk all day with a head down with no productivity.” It can especially help people who might have different styles or don’t normally work together as a strong team. Start an employee design committee to let your employees take some ownership in the place they work. When employees are in the same location, it’s easier to form a connection to their colleagues. This will create an electric, dynamic atmosphere, well suited to brainstorming. Doing the assigned work day-in-day-out like drudgery is not only sad, there are high chances that it rubs off on the fellow employees too. This game can help teams with language and cultural differences strengthen the company culture. Ask each participant to draw five simple images that best describe and communicate your company’s products and culture to a shared document/folder. Workplace Parties. It was fun and surprising, allowing us to get to know each other more and set the casual atmosphere we needed for the workshop. Below are the top 25 employee engagement activities to engage, retain and boost happiness among your employees: Regular Feedbacks. It's an excellent opportunity to bond and even do some professional development. But you can help your company – and employees – emerge stronger from the coronavirus pandemic with these top 10 engagement ideas. By the way, we recently deleted 20+ activities from this list, so you will only see the best. This simple activity is a great way to break the ice and give team members a chance to learn about each other. Since the participants are all asked to name their favorite thing, there is no risk of getting the answer wrong. But the modern workplace is changing, and remote work statistics show a clear trend towards more remote work: now a whopping 22% of Americans work from home—and nearly half of US workers are at least somewhat involved in some remote work. Have participants write down a word that they associate with it. Help Scout pulls this off exceptionally with their 'At Home With Help Scout' series. Yes! It can be as simple as, “we all wear shoes,” to something more specific like, “we were all hired in 2014.” Regardless of the answers, it will create a bond, generate discussion and laughter, and get the group thinking creatively. If you have other culture or engagement needs, Cultr can be customised for most desired behaviours. It gives everyone a better sense of who they're working with. People often enter meetings stressed about tasks they’re working on, or other issues. The goal is to give your employees a voice. It's much more challenging to do this remotely. As managers and associates, we have to take a different approach to engage employees who work from home. The world of traditional, 9-to-5 work is slipping away, according to Global Workplace Analytics and numerous other studies: 5 million employees (3.6% of the workforce) currently work-at-home half-time or more. Happiness at work in an office-space is one thing – ensuring employee happiness while they work from home is quite another. It’s important because it’s proven to improve the efficiency and performance when groups trust each other and feel connected to a common goal. If you prefer to keep the topic more business oriented, limit the list to work or industry-related topics. 1. Establish Remote Work Opportunities. Here’s our comprehensive list of employee engagement activities: 1. This could be a fun online game to play during a coffee break hangout and always results in some fun water cooler chit-chat. This corollary no more exists. This is a remote team-building exercise we picked up from the 6Q team: “You could get your team members to take a flat lay pic of their desk and share it with the rest during your team meetings,” they suggest, adding, “A flat lay is basically a photo of items from directly above, and these items are usually arranged or styled on a flat surface.” Sharing the story behind an object can also be a good way to learn more about your colleagues’ personalities. Remote Work Statistics: 9 Stats That Show Telecommuting is the Future, Remote Hiring Guide: How to Find and Recruit the Best Remote Workers, How to Build Remote Work Culture & Why It's So Important, Foster Collaboration and Engagement in Your Remote Team to Boost Productivity, Remote Team Building: 15 Virtual Games & Activities to Build Team Cohesion, 15 remote team building activities and games, Remote Collaboration Best Practices & Tips for Teams, The Best Remote Work Tools and Software to Have. But apart from work, fun activities like virtual game nights, (online chess tournaments, card games, board games, etc), non-work related video conferencing, fun challenges, and celebrations are employee engagement ideas for work from home. Employee Engagement Ideas for Remote Workers [+Tips on Following Through] Before we discuss the specific employee engagement ideas for remote workers, we recommend that you implement certain project management, HR, video conferencing, and team collaboration tools, to make telework interactions easier between and within teams. In a perfect world, your team churns out exceptional creative work. Do this over video conference with an app that allows screen sharing like Google Meet or Zoom, so the speaker can include video for the storytelling and everyone can connect the name, face and story. One of the best things about working in-house is small talk and banter. This is a great trivia game that really lights a fire to the group chat during a virtual meeting. At the office, coffee breaks tend to be spontaneous - people simply swing by their colleague’s desk and invite them for a quick coffee break. Live polls are an interactive way to gather information from the team and to get them engaged. If you’re struggling to come up with good employee engagement activities, it might be time to take a step back. Because for many teams, there's too much distance to effectively bond with your team. Then, get everyone on a call and have some candid conversations over Google Hangouts or Zoom. ‘Work from home’ has indeed gained mainstream currency. It’s also less anxiety-inducing than some other activities, as there’s no way to get a question about a person’s favorite thing wrong. Each employee should present their image and a short description to the group. Define what employee engagement means for your company. Rock paper scissors tournament. The team at Timely, for instance, uses video conferencing platforms to connect. The lack of workplace engagement activities also brings down the employees’ motivation levels. The result can be really exciting. Similar to the popular MTV Cribs television show, team members show off their workspaces at home. You can use a live streaming service or a social network like Snapchat or Instagram. Remote team building games can be a fun way to refine goals and dissolve monotony in meetings. The demand for conferencing tools and collaboration software is very high, with educational institutions pivoting to video tools to … CARS24 Employees in a meeting – Working From Home Pros and Cons of Remote Work: Is it as Great as it Sounds? Like many other remote team-building activities, this exercise builds empathy and adds context to your everyday work. Hardly a day goes by when you don't have lunch with one of your work friends. 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