In the year that was 2020, many organizations ranging from small businesses to large corporations have experienced a transition towards remote work. With many teams becoming strictly virtual, the coronavirus has entirely reshaped how we collaborate, communicate, and operate. While there are many benefits of virtual teams in the workplace, ranging from cost-effectiveness to healthier work-life balances, there are also many challenges associated with remote work. Venture Up believes that virtual team building is essential for remote teams to succeed even beyond 2020.
Today, we’ll be exploring the power of virtual team building for remote teams. Suppose you are a business owner who has felt the impact of fragmented communication during the transition to remote work. In that case, virtual team building has the power to reinforce the effectiveness of your employees. As the nation’s top team building events consultant, we understand the impact that virtual team building can have on various industries. Let’s take a closer look at the benefits you can expect.
What is Virtual Team Building?
Virtual team building is the ongoing process of bringing remote teams together despite the distance between employees. Effective virtual team building activities bridge the communication gap, helping your team achieve deeper bonds by creating a collaborative environment similar to an in-office setting.
The physical distance of remote work can quickly turn into an emotional distance that leads to feelings of isolation among your employees. When your employees feel isolated, they can soon become uncomfortable working collaboratively with their team members. As the old adage states, “If you don’t use it, you lose it,” and nothing could be more true when it comes to effective communication and collaborative efforts in a workplace. To truly strengthen the power of communication in your team, it must be regularly exercised and built upon- similarly to how you have to exercise to become stronger.
Virtual team building efforts consist of several carefully designed strategies, including games and activities, that are meant to bring more significant human interaction to the remote workplace. These activities help your team connect with each other on a different level- making them feel like they’re a part of a community despite working from home.
According to Bit.AI, “97% of employees and executives believe lack of alignment within a team impacts the outcome of a task or project.” As you can see from this statistic, working together as a team to produce greater results for an organization is crucial, and it’s certainly more critical than ever with so much of the nation’s workforce working remotely. So what can you expect from virtual team building for your remote team?
The Benefits of Virtual Team Building Activities
Whether your team is partially remote or fully remote, virtual team building is essential in building a solid team foundation for your company. A study by the ADP Research Institute states that only 8 percent of employees say they’re fully engaged at work. This means, unfortunately, that a lot of companies are failing to introduce practical strategies that can make their employees feel more empowered and engaged. By introducing team building strategies, such companies could see massive benefits. So what are those benefits? Here are a few things that our team at Venture Up has noticed through our team building efforts.
1. Boost Workplace Morale
Regardless of your industry, you likely recognize the importance of pushing your team to operate at its best, meeting deadlines, and delivering quality work. Unfortunately, this can sometimes lead to burnout and disengagement for your employees. For this reason, the ideal team leader must find a way to encourage their team to function cohesively. Virtual team building activities such as group discussions, brainstorming sessions, and online meetings can allow for more positive feelings among staff.
Virtual team building activities leave your team feeling empowered and motivated due to positive reinforcement and emphasis on the value of their everyday efforts. A happy workplace is a productive workplace. By boosting workplace morale through virtual team building activities, you’re likely to see a considerable increase in productivity. What’s not to like about that?
2. Promotes Collaboration
Without a collaborative team effort, projects demanding coordination between resources simply can’t be effective. While team collaboration is more manageable in an in-office setting, the separation of remote work can make this a less natural thing for your employees. With employees working virtually, aligning your team with the project’s progress can be challenging. This is due to significant discrepancies in communication.
Virtual team building activities are beneficial as they help employees work collaboratively with their coworkers. At Venture Up, we offer a virtual team building activity known as the Cyberthon Virtual Challenge that sends your remote teams on a Global Amazing Race through Cyberspace. This activity requires that your team work collaboratively by connecting your employees from remote locations with fun problem-solving experiences and strategic energizers.
Virtual team building studies show that activities, such as our Cyberthon Virtual Challenge, allow participants to grow more extroverted and open-minded as members learn to be more vocal and expressive to reach a common goal. Additionally, collaboration is further promoted by these types of activities as they make your employees more aware of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. This enables your team to coordinate effectively to complete tasks per their competencies. These are valuable practices that are sure to extend to the way your team collaborates in the workplace.
3. Increases Productivity
With your employees working remotely, the chances are that they don’t always feel as though they have a clear work direction. Without a clear work direction, your employees become less productive over time. However, virtual team building activities allow team leaders to exercise their ability to communicate organizational goals with clarity. This gives your employees a greater sense of purpose that will guide them in their everyday operations. With a renewed sense of motivation, your employees will work with all of their might to reach your company’s goals. By working with this mindset, your team is much less likely to experience burnout while increasing productivity.
4. Encouraging Versatility
With many organizations now requiring a versatile workforce to keep up with the ever-changing demands of their industry, virtual team building activities are valuable. By organizing a virtual team building event for your team, you can effectively enhance resource skills and expertise across various disciplines. These activities also present a unique opportunity for employees to try new tasks and make mistakes while learning, all without the fear of repercussions. There aren’t many opportunities for this type of learning experience within the workplace. In this way, virtual team building activities offer skill-building that your employees simply won’t experience in their job role- especially when working individually from home.
5. Supporting Greater Innovation
When it comes to gaining a business advantage that propels your company to new heights, innovation is vital in competitive industries. Virtual team building offers the opportunity for your employees to engage with each other despite physical distance, promoting creativity, brainstorming, and innovation. The activities and games offered here at Venture Up are cleverly designed to consider the multiple perspectives of your team, which has led to breakthrough innovations for our clients more times than we can count.
Empower Your Team on a Company-Wide Scale With Venture Up
Although 2020 was a stressful year that flung us into entirely unfamiliar territory regarding the way we live and work, virtual team building has offered new opportunities for workplace collaboration. Who would have thought that the transition to remote work would introduce so many to a new way of collaborating that empowers rather than isolates?
If you’re interested in experiencing the benefits of virtual team building for your remote team, look no further than Venture Up, a company with a popular range of team building activities, such as strategic games, bike building, Escape Case, and many more. Venture Up services various industries both nationally and internationally, providing exceptional service that you won’t find elsewhere. Since its founding in 1983, the company has served over 250,000 clients and is looking forward to helping thousands more in the coming years.
Ready to talk about your team? Contact us today at (888) 305-1065 or [email protected].