Over the past few years, Remote work has become more popular than ever, and technology has allowed us to work away from the office more easily.  

For some, remote working has led to increased productivity, improved employee satisfaction and lower staff turnover. In addition, it helps to save on the overhead costs of renting an office and mean that the company has a wider talent pool to choose from.

It seems remote working is here to stay, and for the most part, it has a positive effect on the workforce. However, it does make it harder to build a strong workplace culture and ensure people feel connected. 

Team building activities are an ideal way to keep your employees happy and motivated as well as helping to foster a team spirit and productive work culture.  

Unfortunately, most team building activities can only happen in person. For a remote team, especially one with people working in multiple countries, this is difficult to organise.  

Luckily, team building can take place remotely too. There are lots of Virtual team building activities your company can set up to ensure that your staff feel closely, develop team spirit and foster a strong work culture.  

We put all the useful tips to learn why virtual team building is important, as well as details on the best virtual team building activities for meeting the team and having fun together. 

Why Virtual Team Building is Important?

With remote work increasing around the world, the need for virtual team building sessions has grown too.  

While Remote Teams can’t attend in-person team building events, they can enjoy virtual sessions, which would enable them to feel as close as on-site teams.  

The more engaging and interesting the virtual event, the better the chance of success in creating a team that work well together.  

Good virtual team building activities can improve communication between team members as well as helping to ensure that workers feel more comfortable with one another.  

In addition, they can also create a workplace culture, which is normally very difficult to attain with remote teams.  

Remote workers can sometimes find their productivity suffer and morale takes a hit due to feelings of isolation.  

Virtual team building sessions help to mitigate this, ensuring that all staff feel close to one another and feel as though they’re part of a real team.  

Virtual team building can also help increase engagement in work and give staff a chance to show their skills to management.  

The Best Virtual Team Building Exercises 

Discover the most effective and fun virtual team-building exercises.  

These will help engage your remote team and encourage them to get to know one another better while also allowing you to learn more about them and their personalities.  

Note that some exercises will be better suited to some teams than others, so be sure to carefully consider them before starting.  

For example, an older team might be less interested in playing games than a younger generation. You know your team best, so consider what they would like or wouldn’t like before getting started.  

#1 Virtual Team Building Icebreakers 

Adding a round of icebreaker questions to the beginning of video conference sessions is a simple way to get started with virtual team building.  

Allow 30 seconds per person in your schedule and devise a set of questions to ask anything. One of the difficulties with virtual icebreakers is that there are no obvious visible indicators for who will go next.

Instead, the host should make it clear who goes next throughout the session. 

Examples of questions to ask include:  

• What’s your favourite meal? 
• Are you a morning person or a night owl? 
• Do you prefer tea or coffee? 
• Are you a dog person or a cat person? 
• Do you enjoy working remotely? 
• Where did you grow up? 
• Where do you consider home? 
• What’s your dream location to work from? 
• Would you rather start early or work late? 
• What’s your favourite thing about remote work? 

You can ask different questions for each person to keep things interesting, and the best thing is, you can start with this kind of icebreaking session each time you meet. 

It’s short, and it helps your team to get to know each other a little better.  

#2 Online Office Games 

Online office games combine multiple challenges, virtual team games and activities to form a so-called office Olympiad.  

Fast-paced quizzes, Go Get It lightning scavenger hunts, and a communication sharpening game called “Can You Hear Me Now?” are some examples of virtual activities for employees.  

This activity is perfect for encouraging teamwork and also introducing a little competition that will help to keep your remote team engaged and having fun. 

The whole thing takes 90 minutes, including onboarding, icebreakers, games, challenges, and some buffer time.  

The entire session is controlled by the event host, who will also provide the Zoom room, and everything needed for a successful team bonding experience.  

Online Office Games can incorporate a variety of different group sizes and is designed to be a simple yet highly engaging event that anyone can take part in.  

These are perfect virtual games to play on Zoom or any other video conferencing software.  

#3 Online Office Bingo 

Bingo is a highly popular game all over the world. It’s enjoyed by millions of people, and there are lots of different ways to play.  

One of the best types of bingo for online team building is office bingo. You can print out your own printable bingo cards and fill in anything you like that you think will make a fun bingo session. 

Most people know the rules of bingo, but this is a little different, as the cards contain a fact about some of the team members. Still, players need to finish a row, either horizontal, vertical or diagonal, in order to win.  

Once you have the bingo cards printed out, you can distribute them (via teams, zoom…) among the team before reading out the rules.  

In total, each player should get one card each. The game starts, and players take turns to ask one another questions to try and match them on their bingo card.  

This is a fun team building exercise that introduces a nicer way for team members to get to know one another while also being competitive. You can play free bingo with your team online or offline, using your own printed bingo cards. 

#4 Trivia Quiz 

Everyone loves a good trivia quiz, and the best part of these quizzes is you can ask new questions each week and cater to all different types of knowledge.  

There are plenty of companies that organise virtual trivia quizzes online and offer a wide range of categories and themes to choose from. In addition, you can always host your own by finding a good set of questions or using trivial pursuit.  

A hosted trivia quiz should be between 30 and 60 minutes, and you’ll want to make sure everyone is in teams.  

Teams should be able to discuss their answers among themselves in private, so make sure your virtual conference has this feature set up.  

You can award prizes to the best team and even do weekly or monthly leaderboards to see who the smartest are.  

#5 Geography Challenge 

Like a trivia quiz, the geography challenge lets people show off who’s the smartest. However, this is specifically focused on geography-related trivia.  

You can do lots of different geography tests, including naming the states of the US, the counties of the UK, countries of Europe or even countries and capital cities of the world. 

The best part of these challenges is that they’re easy to set up, and you have a lot of freedom over how you do it. You can do individual quickfire challenges or split the groups up into teams.  

Another fun challenge for remote teams is that someone has to describe a country, and the others have to guess which country it is. You can also play online https://www.geoguessr.com and interact with each other to guess the right country.  

#6 Superhero Challenge 

The Superhero challenge is a fun activity that can help to build morale in a team and boost the affinity that team members have for one another.  

It’s best done with groups of six or more people that have already worked together before and know each other well. Groups are assigned with the task of creating a superhero story about one of the other groups involving each member as a superhero. 

Groups will have to assign a superpower to each of the superheroes in the story that correlates to the skill they bring to the team.  

Some examples of workplace skills include supportive, fast worker, great problem solving, and excellent team leader. When translated into superhero skills, these can be super strength, super speed, super intelligence and the power of persuasion.  

For a more individual session, each person on the team can also design a superhero based on their own strengths in the workplace.  

Team members then take turns to describe themselves and their superheroes and can even draw them to illustrate their point.  

This is a fun activity that can allow people to get creative, learn more about one another and share praise.  

#7 Two Truths One Lie 

Two truths one lie is a really simple game that can be played without much prep time and helps a team to have fun while learning more about each other.  

This is one of the most popular games to play for ice breaking or building a team because of how simple and fun it is. The activity is ideal for conference calls because all you need is a stable WiFi connection and a little creativity. 

Allow each participant one or two minutes to prepare two truths and one lie about themselves.  

Once everyone is ready, each team member reads out their two truths and one lie, in turn, waiting for the rest of the team to guess before moving on to the next person.  

Some examples of two truths and one lie include: 

• I am fluent in Mandarin Chinese 
• I spent the weekend white water rafting 
• I’ve recently lost 3kgs 

After reading these out, the rest of the team guesses which ones are true and which one is a lie. 

 The game continues until everyone has had their turn, and you can keep track of who’s had the most correct guesses and who’s been successful with their lies to score points.  

Everyone gets to learn a little more about one another while also having fun, perfect for raising morale and getting remote teams to feel more tightknit.  

#8 Virtual Fitness Challenge 

A fitness challenge is a great way to get the team active and healthy, working off any bingo wings and helping keep everyone feeling their best.  

Sitting at a desk all day can lead to health problems, and daily fitness can improve mood and boost productivity. There are lots of different fitness activities you can set up, with different goals depending on the current fitness levels of your team.  

Consider a walking challenge for a more sedentary group or try something a bit more intense if your team is already quite fit. 

You can have everyone keep track of how much exercise they’re doing each day and record it on a leaderboard.  

Team members can gain more points for the more exercise they do, encouraging everyone to stay healthy and motivated.  

This can be a great team bonding exercise, helping the remote team to feel closer to each other while also introducing a fun, competitive element.   

#9 Virtual Escape Room  

Escape rooms have become very popular over the last few years. The concept is very simple, although there’s a lot of variety in how they’re set up.  

An escape room is essentially a team-building challenge, where the team must solve clues in order to escape the room within a limited time. 

The team needs to work together closely and communicate well. Unfortunately, remote teams usually can’t get together to take part in a traditional escape room.  

Luckily, there is an alternative, the virtual escape room. Perfect for remote teams, virtual escape rooms combine the fun of real escape rooms with the convenience of online team building.  

There are lots of companies that offer these virtual events, allowing you and your team to join and take part together.  

There are plenty of different options to choose from in terms of themes and difficulty, and no matter which you choose, it’s an excellent opportunity for your team to work together and have fun. 

#10 Open Mic Virtual Icebreaker  

Open mic nights are a popular event at bars, giving people the opportunity to show off their talent and get creative.  

If you have an outgoing team of people that love to make music, tell jokes and generally be creative, why not host a virtual open mic event.  

This is a great icebreaker for people that are very outgoing, although remote teams that are more introverted may be less enthusiastic about taking part. 

If you feel like it, you can bring it up and ask them if they’d like to prepare anything to show the rest of the team.  

Give them a few days to think about it and practice their material before setting up the virtual meeting.  

Make sure you have a clear time limit set so that no one’s performance drags on too long, and give enough time in between for a bit of applause and congratulations.  

#11 Squad Squabble 

Squad Squabble is a virtual team building game show that can be played by teams remotely and offers multiple ways to play.  

In this remote variant, players will advance through eight survey-based questions over two rounds with no time limits. Compete in teams of up to three players for the highest score at the end of the game. 

Each game is as unique as the squad squabbling, thanks to content customisation options. If you commit to numerous games, you’ll get a special discount on the total price of the package. 

Different services offer different squad squabble experiences, but each is incredibly fun and highly engaging.  

This is an excellent way to get remote teammates working together and enjoying themselves, and sessions usually last up to an hour. 

#12 Snapshot Icebreaker 

[Image: an example of how the picture collage might look with pets, family pictures and selfies]  

A snapshot icebreaker is a quick way for your team to get to know one another and spark some friendly conversations.  

It’s a perfect icebreaker, and for this reason, it’s very effective for a remote team who don’t get to interact much outside of the normal workday.  

In this icebreaker, each person in the team uses their phone to take a quick picture of something around them. This could be a pet, their desk ornament, a book they’re reading or the view from their window.  

Once they’ve taken their picture, they can upload it to a virtual whiteboard to make a digital collage. People can then discuss the pictures, ask questions and just generally have a chat about the picture they took and what it means to them.  

As far as icebreakers go, this one is very simple, which means it’s suitable for just about anyone and really easy to set up. It will only take a few minutes and can help your team feel closer to one another.  

#13 Typing Speed Race 

Most remote workers should be pretty good at typing, and this is a great way to see who’s the fastest!  

Typing tests judge speed and accuracy, determining the overall words per minute rate based on the words you can type during the allotted time. This is an excellent way to introduce some competition to the team and a fun challenge that implements work-related skills. 

You can hold a few different typing challenges, including team based and individual races, all while keeping track of the results on the leaderboard.  

Members of our team can take the typing test and share their results via Slack, email, or other communication channels.  

You can also create a Typing Speed Relay, in which the team totals are added together to find out which team is fastest overall.

#14 Murder Mystery

The crime novel is a popular form of fiction made famous by Agatha Christie, whose characters such as Poirot have been made iconic in film and television.    

Murder mystery events allow people to participate and experience the thrill of an exciting murder mystery. Like escape rooms, these events are a fun and interesting activity for friends and colleagues and are also available online. 

Your team can set up a virtual murder mystery event from one of the many online providers. Depending on the service used, this will involve an app or web portal.  

The team will be split into groups who must analyse clues, review case files and work together to solve the mystery. Murder mystery virtual event providers offer a full range of services, and this is an excellent team building activity that adds a little bit of extra fun and excitement.

#15 War of the Wizards 

War of the Wizards is a simple narrative game created for conference calls as a team building activity. The plot of this game revolves around a gang of wizards who have been at odds for centuries, and no one knows why. 

Your team members take on the role of wizards’ minions, working together to create stories, cast spells, and overcome obstacles. 

War of the Wizards is a 90-minute Zoom-based virtual team-building activity. The game will be guided to successful completion by a professional host at your event.  

This fun and unique activity is ideal for any remote team with people who enjoy role-playing games, storytelling, or simply enjoy getting a little nerdy. It encourages lateral thinking, team building and communication while also being lots of fun.  

#16 Virtual Show and Tell

Show & Tell is one of the most effective virtual team building activities for developing public speaking and storytelling skills. It’s also a great way for teams to learn more about each other and having each member of your team share a personal story can help to form genuine bonds. 

Ask your employees to prepare a small narrative in preparation or perform a more spontaneous “grab something within arms reach” approach to Virtual Show & Tell.  

The latter choice is recommended because it stimulates quick and innovative thinking. Each person then picks an object that means something to them, describes what it is and what the connection is to them.  

#17 Ice Cream Float Experience 

The Ice Cream Float experience is a unique event that gives your team the chance to try out making ice cream at home.  

This is very different from the other experiences as it’s a bit more hands-on and will involve ordering the ice cream float experience kits for each team member.  

Once everyone has their kit, the event can be set up, and the host will guide everyone through the ice cream making process.   

The event includes music, dancing and lots of fun and will result in a one-of-a-kind experience. Once the ice cream is made, everyone will be able to use it with a soda of their choice to create their own ice cream float.   

This is a great activity for families to participate in and allows the remote team to feel closer than ever. Although it requires more planning and a hands-on approach, it can be well worth it.

#18 Team Shoutouts

Team shoutouts are a great way for team members to praise one another and share some good feelings and recognition for hard work.  

You can set it up so that each team member congratulates another team member for the work they did last week. To ensure that no one is left out of the praise, be sure to assign a partner to each team member.  

During the congratulation’s session, everyone takes turns praising their assigned team member before applauding them.   

You should encourage comments to be specific to a certain task or project being worked on to avoid simple, generic praise. Rather than saying “good job”, say “good job for solving the problem we had with x”.   

This allows everyone to receive positive and meaningful feedback, while helping the team feel more cohesive and improving morale.   

#19 Do You Know Your Team Challenge

As part of the “Know Your Team” challenge, team members will have to take a quiz. However, this is a quiz with a few surprises.   

Instead of being about general knowledge, sports, science or geography, it will be about the team members themselves! Before setting up the quiz, you will need to ask each team member three questions to describe some aspect of themselves.   

• For example, you might ask what is your favourite vacation destination?  
• What type of animal do you like the most?  
• Or what movie have you seen most often?  

Once you have received everyone’s questions, you can read the answers during the challenge and award points to those who guess the person correctly.   

If the answers are surprising, you can ask team members to explain them. This can be a regular event with different questions each time, so the team gets to know each other well while having fun.   

#20 Fact Recall Challenge 

The “fact recall challenge” is another fun activity that can be played as a remote team building exercise. For this task, everyone on the team must reveal a fact about themselves based on a prompt.  

Prompts can include their most recent holiday destination, favourite TV show, most loved musical artist, favourite food and so on. The host will ask each person, in turn, a different question and then record what they said.  

Once everyone has given their answer, it’s recall time! For the recall part of the challenge, the host reads out a fact, and the other team members must guess who said it.  

Of course, the person who said it won’t be able to guess themselves as that would make things too easy. This is another excellent activity for helping teams get to know each other better, sparking conversation and having some fun.  

#21 Forensic Sketch Artist Challenge 

Forensic Sketch Artist is a virtual team building game that is as entertaining as it is creative.  

It’s relatively simple to play, although there are some instructions that need to be followed carefully to ensure that everyone has fun. Here’s how you can play: 

• Split the team into separate groups, with at least two groups in total.  
• Inform the participants that a string of robberies occurred last night. Fortunately, each group had a witness who witnessed the robber’s face before narrowly escaping the crime scene. 
• Use a random face generator to make a face. 
• Show the “robber’s” face to one person from each group.
• Allow the person who saw the face to explain it to the rest of the team. Other team members must draw the face using the description as a guide. 
• Collect the portraits after ten minutes. 
• The portrait that comes closest to the original face is the winner! 

This is a fun game to play as it’s quite unique and it requires good communication and teamwork skills.  

The best group aren’t the ones with the best artists but those that can communicate effectively and help their team members to understand an abstract idea.  

This is an essential part of great teamwork, so it’s a useful team building activity.  

#22 Guided Meditation 

Ten minutes of quiet in the middle of a busy day can be an effective method of bringing your team together and strengthening your remote teams. A guided meditation session can help you achieve these goals. 

Here’s how to do it: 

• Find a meditation activity on the internet or hire a professional to lead the group. 
• Invite the entire team to a video call.
• Consider delivering a care gift with scented oils and candles to staff ahead of time. 
• Follow the guide’s instructions for mindfulness activities. 

While not strictly a team building exercise, it can be a useful activity for relieving some stress and allowing the team to relax in the middle of a busy workday.  

Not every team will be enthusiastic about the idea, but it can be extremely helpful, especially to those who are open to it.  

The session shouldn’t last much longer than ten minutes, and it can help boost productivity as well as increase morale.  

If the team enjoys it, guided mediation sessions can even become a regular activity, allowing everyone to stay relaxed while remaining highly focused.   

#23 Guess the Emoji Board 

Everyone’s phone should have an emoji board showing the most used emojis in the messaging app of their choice.   

This is a great opportunity for a fun game and a great way to help your team get to know each other. Guess the emoji board is a quick and easy game to play.  

The rules are as follows:  

• Have a virtual conference with all team members and make sure everyone understands the rules before you start.  
• Everyone should take a screenshot of their emoji board showing recently used emojis.  
• Give each player a list of all the players in the session.  
• Each has five minutes to estimate which five emojis each person on the list uses the most.  
• Unveil the answers and award points for “having it in the top five” and “having it in the correct order.” 

This is a quick and simple game that’s surprisingly fun, and it can be quite challenging to guess which emojis some people use the most.  

#24 Song Title Emoji Challenge 

Another fun emoji game to play is the emoji song title challenge.   

This is a quick activity that everyone can participate in and hopefully have a little fun. It’s a great way to start a meeting and get everyone engaged and feeling ready for anything.   

The rules are very simple. Players take turns spelling out the title of a song using only emojis. The other players on the team then try to guess the song.  

Each person has a maximum of three minutes to spell the song and let the others guess. If no one can guess the answer, they reveal the title, and the game moves on to the next person.   

This game is a lot of fun because it is fairly abstract and encourages lateral thinking. Although there is not much teamwork, you can make it a team game, with teams scoring points for guessing the title of a song.

#25 Minesweeper Online Tournament 

“Minesweeper” is a straightforward game that used to be found on most PCs. Today, it can be played online, and it includes lots of new features compared to the old version.  

Online multiplayer is included, which means that your remote team can take part in a competitive tournament. To play, simply type “minesweeper” into your search engine and find the online version.  

Challenge your remote employees to a competitive round of the famous online game and see who comes out on top as the champion. 

You can hold a “Minesweeper” competition for your remote team to see who can get through the game the fastest.  

This online team-building project involves patience, precision, and calculated risk-taking, all of which are desirable qualities for remote teams. Playing individually or in teams can encourage friendly competition and help your team have some fun together.  

#26 The Price is Almost Right 

The Price is Right is a classic game show where contestants have to guess the price of common household items, vehicles and other things in order to win them. The Price is Almost Right is a fun alternative that can be played at home or through a video conference with your remote team. You can set up this virtual game show event very easily, as you just need some contestants and a virtual conference room. 

Make sure your team are all ready and available, and explain the rules carefully to them. Just like the real game show, contestants are tasked with guessing prices. Here though, they’ll be guessing items shown by other team members. Team members take it in turns to show an item, and the rest of the players try to guess the price.  

The first participant to guess the retail price within five pence of the real price without exceeding it earns one point for their team. Players will be eliminated for that round if their prediction is higher than the retail price, but the other teammates may continue. 

#27 Virtual Debate Club 

Debate clubs can be a great way of encouraging discussion between a team as well as learning more about team members. Provided it’s well organised and people don’t get carried away, it can also be a lot of fun.  

However, some topics may not be suitable for debate between employees and could lead to issues, so ensure that your team is well prepared and try to avoid sensitive topics.  

To organise a successful virtual debate club, you can do the following: 

• Invite your team to the debate club and explain clearly what it is and what you’ll be doing.  
• Make an appointment for a 45-minute video call with the team members that want to take part.
• Explain best practices for effective debate, such as clear communication tactics and recognising logical fallacies. 
• Mini debates about unimportant matters are a good idea. For example, a discussion topic could be whether or not raisins should be allowed in cookies. Avoid debates on politics, religion and other sensitive topics. 
• It is a good idea to have a debate referee who will maintain order and keep the debate lively but polite. This can be a different person for each session, or someone who can take on this role permanently if they wish. 

A debate club can improve communication skills within the team and help team members get to know each other better. Good topics for discussion include: pineapple on pizza? What is the best movie ever? What is the best way to cook eggs? Is a hot dog a sandwich?   

#28 Virtual Happy Hours 

Virtual happy hours are video meetings dedicated to entertaining virtual team games and activities that can take place during or after the workday.  

You could, for example, include a round of icebreaker questions before moving on to virtual team trivia or one of the other activities on the list.  

This is a great opportunity for the group to interact with one another and have some fun. It’s particularly well suited for Friday afternoon activities where people already tend to be less motivated to work.  

By offering a fun session and a bit of a break, the team are more likely to feel energised and ready to go back to their work once it’s finished.  

While it may not be a focused team building activity, it’s still an excellent way for a team to understand one another and develop more effective communication.

#29 Family Feud

Family Feud is an incredibly popular game show that first aired in the 70s. It’s still going on today and has thousands of episodes plus loads of different versions in countries all over the world.  

Given the popularity of the show, it could also be a great virtual team building activity. You can create your own Family Feud show or hire a game show service to organize everything for you.   

To start, find a volunteer to be the host. Give your host time to create the survey questions and load them into a PowerPoint presentation. By sharing the PowerPoint screen at your virtual conference, the host can run the game. There are also free PowerPoint templates designed to mimic the show.  

Next, divide your team into two “families”. One member of each family will be named team captain. Each round begins with one member of each family competing to be the first to predict the most common answer to the question in the round, much like the show.   

If someone answers the first answer on the board correctly, they can choose to play or pass the game to the other family. If the player who guesses first does not get the correct answer, the other player has a chance to guess.  

When the head-to-head game has a winner, the host asks the same question to each member of the winning “family”. The round is won if the family guesses all the correct answers correctly before getting three answers wrong. If not, the question is passed on to the other family.   

The other families all offer answers to the captain, who must finally decide which answer his family will get. That family wins the round if it guesses the solution correctly.   

The rounds can last as long as you like, with the winner being determined by the number of points scored. 

#30 Virtual Field Trips 

Field trips give people a chance to get outside and enjoy a slightly different experience in a new environment. While you might not be able to get your whole team together in one place for a real field trip, you can host a virtual one.  

Many museums and other cultural interest sites now offer virtual field trips which can be organised for large groups. Just like a regular guided tour, you’ll be shown around and will be able to learn more about the exhibits thanks to the guide. 

There are loads of different types of virtual field trips, which all provide a completely different experience. If your team enjoys it, you could make it a regular event.  

This is an excellent opportunity to get your team doing something slightly different, learning new things and hopefully having lots of fun.  

While there’s no direct teamwork involved, it’s still a great way for team members to have fun together and take their minds off work for a while. This is good for refreshing the team, leaving everything feeling happier and more productive.  

#31 Virtual Scavenger Hunt 

A scavenger hunt draws a team together like nothing else. It’s a perfect way to keep a group engaged and entertained, providing fun that anyone can enjoy.  

It also includes problem solving interaction, teamwork and competition, perfect for team building.  

Individuals and teams can engage in a virtual scavenger hunt app from the comfort of their own homes by snapping photos, shooting videos, answering questions, scanning QR codes, offering comments, and more using a mobile app and/or browser.  

A good example of a virtual scavenger hunt app is Scavify, which includes real-time collaboration tools like a scoreboard to keep remote teams engaged during this period.  

#32 Treasure Mountain 

Treasure Mountain is a unique team building challenge designed for remote teams.  

It was developed by game designers with a lot of experience in creating unique team building activities that are incredibly engaging.  

This activity is perfect for small teams of three to five people and will take around an hour to complete. This is a paid activity, but it’s worth it for the engagement that you’ll get from your team. 

Each team must have a team captain who will be given access to the game. He/she will then instruct his/her team on the objectives, trying to solve puzzles and challenges to complete each section.   

Team members will need to work closely together, and team captains will need good leadership skills to progress. You can track the time each team takes to complete the different sections and the game as a whole to introduce a competitive element.   

#33 Desert Island Scenario 

The desert island scenario is a simple yet challenging game that can be played with minimal set-up and is lots of fun.  

It encourages communication and lateral thinking skills, and it’s a great opportunity for your team to interact with one another in a different setting.  

The idea of the game is simple, you hold a team meeting and let everyone know that they’ve been stranded, alone, on a desert island for the foreseeable future. Luckily, however, everyone gets to choose three items from a list of survival tools.  

[Image: Someone enjoying themselves on a stranded desert island with some wine and music] 

The list of tools is set up by you, and you can put anything you like on there. The longer and more varied the list the better, as it will give your team more opportunities to get creative.  

The tools don’t even have to be particularly survivor friendly, as long as they encourage some creative discussion.  

Here are some examples you can include: 

• A case of wine 
• Compass 
• Knife 
• Matches 
• Rope 
• Plastic tarp 
• An out-of-battery cell phone 
• Canvas tarp 
• A guitar 
• Lighter fluid 
• Chocolate bars 
• Athletic shoes 
• A solar panel charger 
• An inflatable rubber ring 
• A solar powered stereo system

Once everyone has the list of items, they can have a few minutes to think about which items they will bring.   

After the meeting resumes, each person reveals the items they have chosen and gives reasons for their choice. Give each speaker enough time to answer questions about their choices.  

Give everyone another five minutes to think about whether they should change some of their items based on what they have just heard from their teammates.   

Anyone who has changed their list should be able to explain why. At the end of this virtual event, everyone should have a better idea of how to adapt their ideas based on new perspectives.   

Team building most asked questions

What is virtual team building?

Virtual team building is the name given to any type of activity in a virtual setting that helps a team to develop. Good virtual team building sessions will encourage an understanding of peers’ work, build trust among team members, develops a strong work ethic and allow a good working culture to develop.

What are some fun virtual activities that can be enjoyed by anyone? 

Fun virtual activities that can be enjoyed by remote teams include quizzes, icebreakers, creative exercises, team building puzzles, virtual field trips and much more. There are so many different activities you can set up to have fun with your group.

Can virtual team building activities help for leadership?

Yes, there are plenty of virtual activities you can set up to help develo