17 Remote Team-Building Activities That Are Actually Fun

Working as part of a remote team can give you more freedom, but it also means you see your colleagues in person less often (if at all). That doesn’t mean you’re doomed to eternal isolation or have to resign yourself to only knowing coworkers on a surface level. If you put in a little effort, team building can be just as easy and fun virtually as it is in person.

Taking the time to plan remote team-building activities can increase team bonding and build a better company culture. These activities are also a great way to onboard new employees and welcome them to your remote workspace. They can help you build connections and enable remote team members to get to know one another on a deeper level. This guide offers some of our favorite team building ideas to increase productivity, develop relationships, and boost employee satisfaction.

The 17 Best Remote Team-Building Activities

These remote team-building activities are just as fun as face-to-face meetups. You’ll learn more about your colleagues and what drives them. Plus, you’ll find ways to bond and connect while having a good time. Use these team-building exercises to get to know the rest of your team and develop meaningful relationships with each and every employee.

1. Icebreaker Questions

A surefire way to get acquainted with your remote or hybrid team is to play an icebreaker game. You can do this at the start of your weekly team meetings or schedule a coffee break or lunchtime chit-chat for the activity. Rather than ask employees to share one fun fact, come up with creative questions that offer insight into everyone’s personalities. 

Here are some fun question ideas to get you started:

• What’s your favorite scent?
• If you were to write a book, what genre would it be?
• Who was your favorite movie star when you were a child?
• You’re the host of a late-night comedy show. Who would you have as your first guest?
• What does your dream house look like?
• What meme, GIF, or emoji do you use the most?
• Tell us the story of how you got your most memorable scar.
• Share two truths and a lie, and have everyone guess the lie.

2. Book Club

Design: Jen Montgomery | Book Club Invitation

A fun way to create team bonding and bring employees from different departments together is to host a virtual book club. You can email everyone to ask who wants to participate. Choose books that are work-related — the latest business biography, for example — or keep it fun with murder mysteries and fantasy novels. 

Have employees meet once or twice a month depending on how long or difficult the books are to read. Nominate someone at the beginning of the month and have them choose the book. During the virtual meeting, they’ll lead the discussion and then pick the facilitator for the next month.

3. Favorite Things Gift Exchange

When you need to boost morale, try a “favorite things” gift exchange. Here’s how it works:

• Purchase three copies of your current favorite thing. Maybe it’s a cookbook, a candle, or a neck pillow for travel.
• On the day of the exchange, have someone be the host. The host will put everyone’s name in a hat three times each.
• On your turn, explain your favorite thing, then have the host draw three names.
• Send your favorite thing to those three people. In turn, you’ll receive three other people’s favorite things in the mail.

Build stronger relationships by getting a glimpse into each other’s personal lives. The shared experience of getting to enjoy each other’s favorite things will create new topics to chat about and relate on.

4. Scavenger Hunt

Add a dose of healthy competition with this virtual activity. To set up a virtual scavenger hunt, think of items most employees will have in their homes. These can be things like a favorite coffee cup, a selfie with a pet or roommate, or a photo of the view out their window. Here are some more ideas for your virtual scavenger hunt.

Make a list of these items and schedule an online meeting for the scavenger hunt. During the meeting, share the list of items with attendees, and give them 10 minutes to gather them. The first to find every item on the list wins a prize.

5. Online Office Games

Design: Signature Greenvelope | Game On Invitation

There are hundreds of online games that you can play with one or more of your remote team members. From virtual bingo and Words With Friends to charades and online Pictionary, the team collaboration options are endless. You can set aside time for a company-wide chess championship or just play a quick virtual game with a colleague during breaks. Either way, you’ll be able to use problem-solving skills and spend time getting to know each other.

6. Jukebox

Keep your work playlists fresh by playing Jukebox as a regular team building game. Have someone create a collaborative playlist following a theme, then have everyone add a song to the playlist that fits.

Here are some theme ideas:

• My first concert
• A song that reminds me of high school
• My favorite calming song
• Sweater weather in a song
• A song from my favorite movie
• My current summer jam

These playlists will become seasonal soundtracks that will fill everyone’s headphones with something they wouldn’t normally listen to.

7. Show and Tell

There’s a reason this activity is so popular in young classrooms. It’s a fun and stress-free way to get to know people. It’s also an easy way to share what we enjoy most without having to talk about ourselves — something that can be difficult for introverts and employees who are shy. 

Incorporate this activity into a regular video call or host the event in one of your Slack channels. If you do this with a large group, limit the time people have to share to prevent the meeting from going too long. Give each employee one minute to share a favorite item and explain why it’s so important to them.

8. Virtual Coffee Hangouts

Design: Paper Raven Co. | Coffee Hour Invitation

Another great virtual team-building activity is a coffee hangout. As a manager or team leader, you can schedule a weekly or daily virtual coffee chat where everyone gets together for 15 or 20 minutes just to catch up. Have everyone talk together, or use breakout rooms for smaller group chats.

Alternatively, use an app like Donut, which integrates with your company’s Slack channel. The app randomly pairs people up and invites them to schedule a coffee chat. It’s a fun way to get to know new team members and learn more about colleagues you’ve worked with for years.

9. Virtual Escape Room

A virtual escape room gives team members a chance to solve fun puzzles, build trust, and show off their strengths. It’s also a fun and interactive way to get people working together to reach a common goal — something many remote teams can benefit from. 

Use a site like The Escape Game, which uses a Zoom video chat to get players involved in the action. A game host will offer clues while a guide who is in the escape room will act on your commands. Most escape rooms can only handle 8 to 15 people per activity, so this is perfect for small teams. If you have a larger team, consider splitting up into small groups for this activity.

10. Karaoke

Design: Signature Greenvelope | Karaoke Party! Invitation

This is one of those remote team-building activities that’s all about having fun and not taking yourself too seriously. It’s a fantastic way to infuse a little joy into the workweek and also enables remote team members to see a more playful side of their coworkers. 

Use a video conferencing platform like Zoom or Microsoft Teams to host a virtual karaoke party where remote workers can sing their hearts out. Take it to the next level by asking attendees to dress in a silly costume or like their favorite singer. You can also mail fun props to your team before the big event.

11. Skill Swap

Pool your talents and share what you know with a show-and-share team call. Invite team members to share a quick skill with the group, like Notion shortcuts, the perfect iced coffee method, or a few phrases in another language.

12. Pub Trivia

There’s nothing quite as fun as going out to a local pub or coffee shop and trying to solve trivia questions. With remote-based teams, you can still enjoy the same friendly competition and teamwork with a virtual trivia game. 

Use a site like Water Cooler Trivia, which handcrafts weekly trivia questions specifically for your team. You can choose the time the trivia questions are sent, even if your team is based across multiple time zones. The site does all the scoring for you, and you’ll even get a weekly leaderboard to see who you need to beat. This activity is great for larger teams, and you can pit different departments against each other for some friendly rivalry.

13. Virtual Happy Hour

Design: Sandra Picco Design LLC | Wifi and Wine Invitation

A virtual happy hour is one of the most popular remote team-building activities since it’s easy to set up and doesn’t require much planning. All you need is a virtual meeting room and a time and date for your hangout. This can be a recurring initiative or a one-time activity to introduce new team members or to bid adieu as part of a virtual retirement party.

14. Storytelling

Another fun activity to liven up virtual meetings and video conference calls is to play a storytelling game. This one doesn’t require any advance planning, and you can do it multiple times throughout the year. 

Here’s how it works: Start a story in one or two sentences. For example, you can say something like, “It was a dark and stormy night, and Peter was driving home after a long day at the office. He rounded a bend, and then …” Then pick a team member to be the next person who will add another sentence or two to the story. The game continues until every remote team member has contributed to the story.

This team activity is a great way to get people who work from home to collaborate and work together. It’s perfect for teams that have a lot of history together as well as those with new employees.

15. Secret Santa

Ring in the holidays with a good old gift exchange. For all who want to participate, pick names out of a hat, or use a platform like Elfster. We love the digital option because you can create a wishlist so there’s no guessing as to what your person might like. You can even ask anonymous questions to the person you’re buying for to make sure you nail it.

Get together on a team call the day before you’re off for the holidays to reveal who had who and share what you got.

16. Home Tour

Design: Jen Montgomery | House Party Invitation

A virtual home tour is a fun way to get to know remote employees a little better. Think of it as a real-life MTV Cribs episode. You’ll get a peek at everyone’s personal home style, and you may even get to meet their family members and pets along the way! 

For this idea, each team member creates a video that shares a portion of their home. They can then use the screen-sharing settings in your usual video call or team meeting to share the footage. By recording beforehand instead of doing a live tour, employees can tidy up and show off their abode’s best attributes.

17. Music Contest

Get to know team members by discovering what they listen to with a music contest. For this activity, each employee will need a Spotify account. Create a playlist and share it with all team members. Choose a genre or topics — like French music or songs with lyrics about nature — and ask each employee to add one or two songs that fit the criteria. On Fridays, have the team listen to the playlist and vote on their favorite song. The person with the winning song gets to pick the playlist topic for the next week.

Tips for Hosting Virtual Activities

If you’re the one in charge, here are a few pointers to make sure the moment goes smoothly:

• Stick to familiar video software: Use whatever you usually use day-to-day, whether that’s Zoom, Teams, or Google Meet. No need to make everyone navigate a brand-new software!
• Check platform capabilities ahead of time: Make sure you’re comfortable with the breakout rooms, presentation controls, polling capabilities, music-playing settings, and whiteboard features.
• Go off mute: It’s polite to stay muted during a meeting, but for a fun activity, encourage everyone to go off mute. That way you aren’t stuck talking to yourself while everyone stays quiet.
• Send information ahead of time: Sometimes people need time to prepare for a group activity, especially more introverted folks. Give the team a heads up on what you’ll be doing and what will be asked of them so they can mentally prepare.
• Include all personality types: Rather than play a game where everyone has to do an impersonation, keep in mind that not everyone is comfortable in front of other people. Pick an activity that suits everyone, even if some want to stay on the quiet side.

Invite Colleagues in Style with Digital Invitations

Whether you’ve been doing remote work since before it was cool or you’re trying to improve camaraderie among a new group, remote team-building activities can boost team morale and make the workday more enjoyable. From Slack trivia and book club to icebreaker games during team check-ins, there are plenty of team-building events to boost employee engagement and make “going to the office” more enjoyable for all.

Make it feel like a special occasion by sending out digital invitations. At Greenvelope, we have hundreds of online invitations designed specifically for business use. You can use these virtual invites for end-of-year parties or to get employees excited about a remote team-building activity or team retreat. Whatever event you’re hosting, there’s an invite design to fit your needs.