Key Takeaways:
- A regular schedule of team building games is key to successful remote work. Without the opportunity to build genuine connection remote teams will underperform.
- There are hundreds of games available to play virtually. We’ve broken them down into five manageable groups based on the game scope and team goals.
- Virtual team building doesn’t have to be a burden. There are professional vendors who can run complex games for any size group. For example: The Poker People hosts poker tournaments with real dealers for up to 200 players.
Harness the Power of Team Building Virtual Activities for Work
So you have been tasked with finding virtual corporate team building activities that everyone can participate in, is appropriate for your sized group, and doesn’t make you lose your mind while trying to organize it. Good luck with that! Don’t worry, there are plenty of team building events for work and we have a good chunk of them here.
If you are looking for some new company game ideas or to build out a formal program of virtual team building activities for work, don’t worry, I have literally 100 innovative virtual team building activities just for you. Spoiler alert, it is actually 103! To make your life easier, I split them up into categories:
- Virtual team building icebreakers that take less than five minutes
- Online games that you should hire a pro to host
- Games that take around thirty minutes
- Team building activities that take place on Slack or other offline channels
- Games for remote teams who are able to download an app
First, a quick definition of virtual team building activities. At its core, the concept of “online team building” or “virtual team building” shares the same fundamental objectives as in-person team building. It revolves around the idea of bringing colleagues together in a meaningful manner, even if they are working from all over the world. The best corporate team building activities foster an environment where team members genuinely like and trust their remote coworkers because they have developed strong interpersonal connections.
That’s just a fancy way to say that people who like each other work better together. The advantages of a well-executed virtual team building activity are numerous so let’s jump into our first group. These icebreaker games are easy to play, take only a few minutes, and have minimal set up. They are by far the easiest company game ideas to try first.
25 Virtual Team Building Games To Play With Coworkers In Under Five Minutes
- Chubby Bunny Challenge – How many times can you say that phrase in 30 seconds? It’s harder than you think! And yes, I know you’re saying it in your head right now.
- Desert Survival – Team members must create a pack list of five items they would want with them if trapped alone in the desert and then defend their choices online.
- Fact vs. Fiction – Participants make three statements about themselves, one of which is false, and participants try to decipher fact from fiction. This is a common online group game for work and one of my favorite ones.
- Favorite Photo – Tell people to share their favorite photos in their gallery. It could be anything they find interesting: landscape, people, etc.
- Fill in the Map – Use a blank map of any continent and see who can fill in the most countries, states, or provinces, correctly.
- I Suck At – Participants are given three different skills to rank how they think they would rate. Example: Lumberjack, Doctor, Seamstress. How would they do and why?
- Logo or NoGo – Participants are shown a logo and must guess if the company or product is real.
- My Best Day – Easy online team building activity where participants share a story about a time or activity that they really enjoyed.
- Never Have I Ever – Another easy icebreaker game where one person makes a statement about something they have never done, and participants chime in on their related experiences. This is a popular virtual activity for work because it is a fun way to get to know people.
- Number Five Will Shock You – Click bait style game where you come up with five random things about yourself to share with the group.
- Pancakes or Waffles – Choose one and why it is best, then put the winner against the next option. Pancakes or waffles, waffles or kittens, kittens or cell phones? As virtual corporate games go, this one is pretty common, and really fun.
- Rose or Thorn – Every person shares their rose (a positive experience) and thorn (a negative experience) that they feel comfortable sharing with their coworkers.
- Starring Me – A scene from an obscure film is shown and participants invent the dialogue in real time. This is a quick online team bonding activity that can create some laughs at the start of a meeting.
- Scavenger Hunt – Participants search their own homes to find the items on the list and present them on camera in a set timeframe. Easy to play as individuals or with remote teams.
- Show and Tell – Easy virtual corporate team building activity with minimal prep. This grade school classic can reveal what we really like as adults.
- Story Builder – One participant starts the story with an opening line and then the next participant picks it up from there.
- Taboo – Describe the word but don’t say the word. For a corporate team building twist, choose words that are specific to your job or industry.
- Two Truths and a Lie – a game where players take turns sharing three statements about themselves, two of which are true and one of which is a lie.
- Typing Test – Speedy fingers meet their match when office mates battle for keyboard supremacy in this corporate team building activity.
- Up Close – Similar to Taboo, players must describe a phrase or object without using a list of its most common traits. For a corporate twist, make the subject a company product or project.
- Who Am I? – Players take turns describing a person, place, or thing and answering yes or no questions until the subject is guessed.
- Who’s the Baby? – Team members show off baby pictures and try to guess which team member they belong to.
- Would You Rather? – Participants choose their preferred option from two unappealing choices and explain how they would get out of the situation. Would you rather be trapped on a desert island or at the top of a mountain. Mountain – because I can ski and I’d get down easily.
- You’re Adjective – Easy icebreaker game, especially for virtual onboarding. Players name adjectives that correspond with the letters of their name. For example, new-hire April is Appreciative, Punctual, Red-haired, Inquisitive, and Left-handed.
- Zoom In – A close-up image of an object is shared and gradually zoomed out. Players must guess the object before it is fully revealed.
Pro Tip: Want to make sure your 5 minute games at work, work? We have a full post about how to maximize every second of those 5 minutes in our Guide to 5-Minute Virtual Team Building Activities.
When is it Time to Bring in a Pro to Host Your Virtual Team Events for Work?
While those games are pretty easy to do and take a short period of time, they are also really only good for smaller groups. If you have a large group or are looking for a game that has more depth, consider hiring a professional to run your corporate team building activity. For example, The Poker People provides real dealers to teach Texas Hold’em and then holds a poker tournament that can accommodate up to 200 players. That’s a lot of work to pull off on your own. When deciding to hire a pro, consider these factors.
- How many players are there? A small group can be easy to manage but once you’re over 20 players it might be best to select a game that comes as a package deal.
- How much time do you have? No matter what game you choose, you still have to promote it internally and keep track of the RSVP’s. Do you have enough time to create the entire game on top of that?
- How complex is the game? Some games, like escape rooms or a murder mystery, are not easy to come up with on your own. Even a game like trivia can sound easy, but you’ll still need 50 to 100 questions covering lots of different categories.
Our next group of online games are best executed with a professional host. Sometimes it is best not to leave it to chance and take advantages of a professional who understands team building activities for work and how to best implement them. There are several online marketplaces like TeamBonding, Offsite, and Elevent. These companies curate dozens of vendors to provide a variety of games.
11 Online Activities For Remote Teams That Are Best Run By Professionals
- Texas Hold’em Poker Tournament – Over 120 million people worldwide play poker so don’t underestimate your office mates. This is a corporate team building activity that you should hire a vendor to conduct. (I recommend The Poker People.) The computer runs the game while professional dealers teach everyone how to play. Poker is a great game for all sized groups because it can be played with 8 people or 80 or even up to 200. This is by far my top team building activity for work.
- International Food Tour – A gift box of goodies from around the world is sent to all participants of this virtual activity and a professional expert joins the video meeting to lead participants through the tastings.
- Bingo – Several online versions are available with or without hosts, but hiring a pro means the game will move quickly. For a more interesting game, create bingo cards with personal characteristics. “Speaks more than one language,” “has a pet,” or “has traveled to more than 10 countries” are fun ways to showcase a virtual coworker in the game.
- Casino Night – A Las Vegas experience is a virtual team building activity because there is something for everyone. Real dealers teach guests to play craps, blackjack, and roulette. Players can win chips and prizes.
- Escape Rooms – The popular in-person games make a great virtual activity for corporate teams. Coworkers must solve a series of clues in order to escape in a set amount of time.
- Horse Races – Players work in teams to train their horses, devise race strategies, sabotage their opponents, and bet on the outcomes. This game requires a host because they will provide the racing forms, stats, and footage of real horse races.
- Jeopardy – Play the classic answer-question game as a virtual team building activity. This game is best done with a professional company because it is more fun with a real game show host to manage the questions and scoring. Some vendors can customize the answers to reflect company specific messaging.
- Mafia – Team members are assigned roles such as “mafia”, “doctor”, and “citizen” in this team building game. The “mafia” secretly tries to eliminate the other players while the “doctor” tries to save them.
- Murder Mystery – Decide whodunnit and see if you’re right. Professional vendors can customize the game to your group size in this activity.
- Office Olympics – A professional host will curate the games based on your company’s industry and number of participants. “Events” can take place in one meeting or over the course of several sessions. A fun perk in this specific corporate team building activity is that participants earn medals for their finish order that can be mailed to them.
- Trivia – Players divide into teams and answer questions and compete for prizes or bragging rights. We recommend hiring a host for your corporate team building version to make sure there are a wide variety of questions and topics.
Choosing the Right Virtual Game for Your Team
Not every game is appropriate for every group. Small team can get away with a lot more one-on-one games while larger groups will need to plan ahead and choose games like a poker tournament that can handle dozens of players at once. We have suggestions of company game ideas based on size in these three posts. Feel free to check them out. 30 Online Games for Small Teams, Great Games for Mid-sized Teams, and Virtual team Building for Large Groups. Enjoy!
Looking for Something In Between Icebreakers and a Pro for Your Virtual Corporate Games?
There are several virtual team building activities that you can set up on your own that take around 30 minutes. Some require more planning than others, but they are all good for small or medium sized remote teams. When planning a game on your own, consider these important factors:
- Know your audience. There is a joke that says an introverted engineer will stare at their shoes when they talk to you and an extroverted engineer will stare at your shoes. Online team bonding games are supposed to draw people out of their shell but choose a game that fits the personality of your group.
- Know the rules. Take a minute to get familiar with how the game will function. Maybe even a short practice run will help. Overly complex games will get bogged down with instructions and waste time.
- Know your goals. Are you using this for onboarding or are you playing with an experienced team who has history together? Choose a game that gets you to your goal.
When your game is complete, follow up for feedback from your participants. A good team building program will have a regular schedule of games that take place monthly or quarterly. Getting feedback from participants will help you choose what games are the most fun and will generate the most attendance. For more information on how to host virtual team building activities, check out out guide to Building Stronger Teams: Best Practices for Virtual Team Building. If you want more game ideas check out Zoom Team Building Games.
21 Virtual Corporate Team Building Activities That Take Around 30 Minutes
- A to Z – An easy icebreaker game that requires minimal planning. Select an object like a fruit or a type of car. Players then take turns naming the items in alphabetical order until they cannot think of the next one in sequence. For example: Apple, Banana, Cherry, etc.
- Branding Battle – Each participant or team has five minutes to come up with an exciting marketing campaign for mundane or boring common items.
- Camera Off – One person turns off their camera and must describe an object one word at a time. The group must guess the object based on the description. Fewest descriptive words wins.
- Charades – The classic “acting out” game works great as a remote team building activity.
- Finish The Story – Teams are given a fake headline and have five minutes to come up with the accompanying article.
- Five Clicks Away – Link two seemingly unrelated topics through Wikipedia internal links. Obama and Cheeseburgers. How many clicks inside wiki will it take to connect them?
- Geoguesser – Players are randomly placed somewhere in the world on Google Street View and must figure out where they are based on their surroundings. Excellent for remote workers in different parts of the world.
- Guess the Emoji Song – A player or team selects a song from their playlist and conveys the song title or key lyrics with the use of emojis in the chat. Players continue to add emojis until the song is guessed or time runs out.
- Keep Talking and No One Explodes – One team member must follow instructions to diffuse the bomb and the other team members must convey their instructions from the complicated and confusing Bomb Diffusing Manual.
- Lip Sync Battle – Cue up the music and see who can stay in sync. Fellow players vote for the winners.
- Museum Tour – Take a virtual museum tour with your coworkers. Add an extra element by including a scavenger hunt.
- Open Mic – Ever want to try your hand at standup comedy? Make up your own material or lip-sync one of your favorite sets. Combine this one with a virtual happy hour for an extra fun time.
- Remote Office Cribs – In this team building activity, willing participants share a video tour of their visible workspace in this MTV Cribs knock off.
- Reverse Charades – A twist on the original. Only one player is unaware of the word and the remaining players must act out their clues on camera at the same time.
- Rock, Paper, Scissors – Tournament – The rules are the same. The rock beats scissors, scissor beats paper, and paper beats the rock. Randomly select different remote employees to square off against each other and see who progresses through the bracket to victory.
- Scattergories – The classic category game has been a party staple since 1988 and is an easy virtual corporate team building activity for any size team.
- Shark or Tank – Participants are randomly assigned a mundane item in their home like a lamp or toaster and must pitch the product to the rest of the team who rate their presentation and the product’s potential. Feel free to pair up two remote workers for this virtual activity and have them pitch as a team.
- Talent Show – Virtual coworkers compete for glory and bragging rights while showcasing their own special skills.
- Tour Guide – Each participant is randomly assigned a location in the world and has five minutes to prepare their “tour” of that location. This is a great team building activity for coworkers from different countries because it also promotes diversity and cultural education.
- Vision Board Mystery – Participants choose images that represent themselves prior to the game and then the images are shown to the group to see if they can figure out which remote coworker the vision board represents.
- We Didn’t Start the Fire – Teams must add another set of lyrics to the Billy Joel classic. Singing optional.
For your next Poker Team Building Event
Corporate Team Building Can Happen Between Formal Events
There are ways to build camaraderie without making everyone come on Zoom and play together at the same time. Internal communication channels like Slack, Zulip, Flowdock, and Rocket.Chat. are great ways to connect. These are good for one-on-one conversations and small groups. When setting up virtual team building opportunities through these channels, don’t forget to:
- Manage the timeline. A game can take a few minutes or a few days. There is no pressure and that’s part of the appeal.
- Manage the members. These channels are great for people who know each other but don’t be afraid to connect two random remote workers. Slack’s Donut feature will randomly assign two people to have virtual coffee together.
- Manage the message. The goal of team building is to get to know each other and build genuine friendships, not to create another text string about your TPS reports.
The key to success in planning your virtual team building game online is to have a plan and a goal. Just throwing a bunch of people into a Zoom call and telling them to perform won’t work. The offline version is not any better. Take a minute to plan who you are going to pair up and why. Ensure that time zones align, consider the languages spoken or needed for communication, and have an exit plan in place if either participant is not happy being asked to connect.”
10 Team Building Activities That You Can Participate In Offline
- Book Club – Gather a group that likes to read and choose a monthly book to touch base on.
- Coffee Chats – Just meet for coffee and talk about your day.
- Donut on Slack – This Slack add-on randomly pairs people for chat and encourages connection.
- Egg Drop – Find materials around your home to create the best device to protect a raw egg from being dropped from a height. Record your progress and report your outcome.
- Guided Meditation – Gather a group and participate in a guided meditation together.
- Recipe Swap – Trade family recipes with coworkers or put them in a company-wide cookbook for all to try.
- Sudoku – Pit your skills against your coworkers when you post your daily score.
- Wordle – Post your daily Wordle results on a chat and see who reigns supreme. Add to the challenge with Quordle (4 words) or Octordle (8 words). And if you don’t have anything else in life that you’re supposed to be doing, try Dordle (solve two words at once) or Sedecordle (16 words) or even Absurdle, the anti-Wordle game that changes the mystery word based on your guesses just to hurt you.
- Words With Friends – This pre-pandemic online game is still going strong and is one if the easiest of the corporate team building activities.
- X Marks the Spot – A specific object is hidden in a shared document or online platform that the whole team uses. Clues are released periodically to its location. The first person to find the treasure wins. This game is good on Slack as it can take place over several hours or days.
Some Company Game Ideas Require an App or Third-Party Site
Our last group of games are ones that require an outside website to play. Some of these are classic board games you may remember from childhood, or your parents told you about them from back when they walked up hill in the snow to school every day. Some are online team strategy games and some are just childhood fun. If you are into specific types of games, check out two of our articles on Building Stronger Teams: Virtual Board Games and Online Strategy Games. When choosing one of these games keep the following in mind:
- Choose games that are accessible. Everyone needs to be able to get to the platform, so be sure the tech is correct. Zoom has a lot of built-in games.
- Choose games that fit your timeline. Something quick like Uno or checkers can be fast and fun, but a chess game can last for days.
- Choose games that fit the group size. If you find a game that is built for four players but you have twelve, don’t be afraid to duplicate it in several breakout room and swap players after each round. If you do have a large group, you may want to consider going back to the hosted game list and hiring a pro.
Many of these team building options are accessible through browsers but some do require a download, so clear that with IT before you start adding extensions to a work computer. Running into a firewall doesn’t mean you should rule the game out entirely. Here at The Poker People, we often have clients with strong firewalls. Players still join on Zoom and just play the game on a personal device like a tablet or laptop.
36 Corporate Team Building Games Played On An App
- Backgammon – One of the oldest and most well-known games in the world. Similar to chess in that it can be played by two people over the course of a day or longer.
- Battleship – Easy activity and lots of fun. Plus, how often do you get to yell, “You sunk my battleship!” at work.
- Boggle – Build words and points with this easy game. Great when paired with one-on-one coffee hang outs.
- Bridge – This classic game is played with four people and can be a fun small group team building activity.
- Cards Against Humanity – This team building activity might not be safe for work, but you will definitely get to know your coworkers with this virtual game. Maybe more than you wanted to.
- Checkers – Easy and quick game for one-on-one time. Best combined with another activity like a coffee hang.
- Chess – Fantastic strategy game with a long history that can be used with Slack or other messing as a team building activity.
- Clue – Was it Colonel Mustard in the library with a candle stick? That is up to your group to find out. This game is pretty easy to convert to a virtual corporate game for work.
- Codenames – The classic guess the word and defeat the spy game. This is a huge favorite team building activity with our group. If we are not playing in a poker tournament, you can find us playing Codenames.
- Crazy 8’s – This childhood favorite is easy to add to a coffee chat or other hang. Using games like Crazy 8’s, checkers, or Boggle are great low-stakes ways to provide structure to one-on-one meetings because there is always something to talk about.
- Cribbage – Ahh, one of my favorite games growing up. Grandpa taught me to move the pegs and earn the points. First to 121 wins. He won almost all the time, but I still loved to play.
- Dominos – Match the number on the domino and build your advantage. Did you know that “pips” don’t just hang out with Gladys Knight? They are the little dots on a domino that show the value. They are also the symbols on a playing card and the dots on dice.
- Dungeons & Dragons – A classic game for the ages. Talk about your online strategy games. This one might not be the ideal company game idea since it takes time and preparation and can be difficult for new players to pick up in a short window of time.
- Eucher – Another trick-based card game popularized in the Midwest of the US. This is a fun team bonding game that you can find available in several apps.
- Hearts – Win the game by having the fewest hearts and avoid the queen of spades. Quick game to learn and play online.
- Jackbox – This very popular game platform has a variety of games available online. There will be several online group games for work on this app.
- Kahoot – Online quiz builder that can be customized for small or medium sized groups.
- Magic the Gathering – Play your creature, sorcery, and enchanted cards correctly to claim victory.
- Mahjong – This is a classic strategy game with tiles that dates back hundreds of years. Similar to poker, it is easy to learn and hard to master.
- Monopoly – Build those hotels and charge your boss triple rent with this game of build and bust.
- Movie Night – Screenshare a classic movie for the whole group. Click that “Optimize for sound” button when you start this activity. Oh, and BYO popcorn.
- Oregon Trail – Harken back to the olden days of the Internet and try to avoid dysentery as you head west.
- Pandemic – Save the world from a global health crisis. Too soon?
- Quick Draw – Similar to Pictionary, this game puts teams on a short timeclock to create their drawings.
- Quizlet – Another online quiz builder with customizable features. This can be customized to fit company game ideas and be a great team building activity.
- Risk – Try your hand at world domination in this land grab classic. This is a fun virtual team building activity for work because so many companies are multi-national. Playing the game actually helps coworkers learn about each other’s part of the world. And try to own it, so yeah, there’s a downside.
- Scrabble – Use your tiles to build words and build off other people’s words to generate the most points possible. Triple Letter Fun! This has been a family team building activity at my house for years. It is awesome to see it become a corporate team building activity too.
- Settlers of Catan – Build a road, raise an army, and pile on the points for each city you create.
- Skribbl – Pictionary style online option for a virtual activity at work.
- Spades – A trick taking game that is played in teams of two. Similar to Bridge or Euchre and a good online team building activity for small groups.
- Sporcle – Online trivia builder that can be customized to your small group. We recommend using a professional host for medium and large groups because these games require a lot of work to set up and run.
- The Game of Life – Plan your future and see where you land in this old school classic.
- Ticket to Ride – Lay your train tracks down before your competition and secure your path to victory in this easy to learn game. Good for small online groups as it is limited to five players max.
- Uno – Hit them with a reverse and a draw four on your way to calling out Uno in this easy team bonding game!
- Werewolf – Save the villagers and survive the werewolf attack. This classic role-playing game translates well as a virtual team building activity for work.
- Yahtzee – Roll the dice and earn points. Yahtzee is a fun online team bonding game for small groups.
Need More Online Group Games for Work? Online Team Strategy Games? Or Best Practices?
This list is pretty extensive but if you want more great company game ideas or just to learn more about conducting your own virtual team events for work we have several other posts you might like. Check out Virtual Poker on Zoom, Virtual Strategy Games , or Best Practices for Building Stronger Teams.
I hope you have enjoyed this list of my favorite 103 virtual team building games for the corporate office. The goal is to go beyond the traditional boundaries of the workplace and provide engaging opportunities for team members to connect, collaborate, and have fun together in the digital realm. Whether it’s icebreakers to kickstart a meeting, problem-solving challenges to boost critical thinking, or creative activities to stimulate innovation, we hope you have fun and go all in on virtual team building.
Frequently Asked Questions About Virtual Corporate Team Building Activities.
There are as many team building games as there are companies to play them but the goal is always the same: Create a safe place for the humans to be themselves. Do that and you will find that genuine relationships develop. Everyone wins because those bonds make work, and life, much easier.
A professional’s job is to make your job easier. So if you have a large group, want to play a more complex game, or just don’t have time to plan and research a new team building activity every quarter, bring in someone to do the heavy lifting for you. The best part is that you will also get to play.
It depends on the game you choose and the normal rhythm of your company schedule. Icebreaker games can be added to any meeting but if you are planning a large event for multiple offices around the world, you may be better off having two or three smaller games that fit the individual time zones. This is where using a pro can also benefit you. Plan ahead, the mot popular day for online team building activities is Thursday.
Yes. Building camaraderie between staff members is great but actually getting to know your customers on a personal level is fantastic. That will create loyalty and lead to referrals. Poker is our number recommendation for this type of event.
A simple way to make a virtual meeting more fun is to include virtual team games and activities that are not specifically in reference to your work. For example, you might include a trivia night, a quick dance party to shake stress out, or maybe even an online poker game. There is something called “The 8% Rule,” which states that 8% of the time in any meeting should be dedicated to fun virtual team building exercises. While that may not be possible in every meeting, try to add a fun virtual activity to your schedule monthly, if not weekly.
In addition to strong leadership, one of the most effective ways to build team morale remotely is to participate in games and activities together. What better way to get your coworkers to have fun than giving them a competitive game to work together on? Competition is a form of extrinsic motivation, where external circumstances work as the driving force instead of motivation coming from within an individual. Let your chosen virtual activity be the driving force for morale within your workplace.
Ideally, a remote employee should learn more about his or her company, role, and/or coworkers as a result of the exercise. Some of the most effective remote team building activities are office trivia, two truths and a lie, virtual bingo, and dare I say, a poker tournament. As a company, we have found that the camaraderie gained during our online during our poker games to be a very beneficial and effective outcome.
Dedicating either the entire meeting to virtual team building activities, allocating 30 minutes at the end of your event, or following “The 8% Rule” as described three FAQ’s ago, are three great options to include virtual team-building activities in your meetings.
