Building a team culture among remote workers:

Coming together face-to-face, in the same room, does not automatically create team cohesion and a strong sense of team. Yet, many people think having online meetings automatically means it’s difficult for staff to have a strong sense of team.

When thinking about creating a sense of team online, try to get away from that aforementioned belief. People feel a part of a team if they feel heard and included, whether online or off. And they will attend meetings and pay attention to those meetings if they feel the meeting is relevant to their work - on or offline.

The most important element for any meeting, online or off, no matter what your activities: set and follow a clearly defined meeting agenda, and start and end on time. This shows you respect everyone’s time, and helps participants better value meetings.

Many people feel that online meetings lack the spontaneous or unplanned learning of onsite meeting spaces. With that in mind, here are suggestions for online meetings, both so that they achieve something and so that they build some informal learning opportunities and reveal valuable skills and knowledge of team members you may not be aware of:

Informal Activities

Once a week, every other week, once a month - whatever you think would be best, depending on your team - do any ONE of the following:

• Have team members share baby photos with one team member, who then shares them with the team without identification, and asks the team to guess who is who.
   
• Have team members share a recipe that is either their very favorite food or is representative of their culture. Randomly assign different team members each others’ recipes. They have two weeks or a month (whatever) to make the dish, take a photo of the end result, and get ready to share their thoughts on a particular day.
   
• Have a non-work-related question of the week or month, such as favorite vacation spot, what their career goal when they were 8 years old was, their favorite actor, their favorite movie, etc. Questions can be personnel but not anything that any team member wouldn’t want others to know.
   
• Have members take a photo outside somewhere – anywhere – that is not at all work related (photo in a garden, at the beach, next to a sculpture, under a tree, on a swing) and share it at the start of the meeting, with why they are sharing it.
   
• Create a “get to know you” exercise, and have team members submit three facts about themselves to one person. Then share the facts anonymously with the team, and they guess which facts go with which person.
   
• Have a hat day, where everyone is supposed to wear a hat at the start of one of your video web conferences.
   
• Two minute virtual dance party.

Work-related Activities

• Encourage everyone to have a photo or avatar in whatever online platform you use to communicate. Also encourage anyone who needs help to ask for such (and encourage team members to help each other). This helps the team see each other as people, with personalities.
   
• Encourage everyone to have filled out their bio in whatever online platform you use to communicate, if there is an option for that. This helps create a more full profile of everyone to each other, more than just an email address. It also helps people better remember who is who.
   
• Ask team members to be in a quiet space for the meeting, with no distracting background noises and nothing moving in the background (people walking back and forth through the room, for instance).
   
• Always celebrate something at every meeting. It can be a team success, like a new process improvement or a timely bug fix. Consider also employee milestones: Do you have someone who is crossing a work anniversary this month?
   
• Do a quick poll question:
  
  • “Which new initiative are you most excited about?”
  • “Be honest. How sleepy are you?”
  • “Describe your current mood in one word!”
  
  
• Allow employees to submit anonymous questions before the meeting, and answer them during the meeting.
   
• During a video training, encourage everyone to be on a live chat, and to share their thoughts and comments during the training.
   
• Encourage employees to utilize emojis during the meeting, to react to what's happening.
   
• Ask for lightning round updates of all team members.
   
• Engage the team in brainstorming something - anything - related to your work.
   
• If someone hasn't said anything for the meeting , ask them, specifically, "Lisa, you've been quiet - is there anything you would like to say/share?"
   
• Have conversations with team members about what success will look like for themselves within a project and for an overall project.
   
• Have team members draw the process of them working together from start of the project to finish, showing how each team member plays a role. Share these and look for similarities and differences.