Online team building games for remote, hybrid, and distributed teams (updated: June 2022)

The way we work has changed forever. Gone are the days where every employee comes to the office and works in the same building 5 days per week, usually from a designated desk.

Flexible working models are necessary as employees are demanding them, and different set-ups like remote teams, hybrid teams, and distributed teams are becoming increasingly common for companies of all sizes.

A challenge for these flexible alternatives is building relationships between colleagues and maintaining employee engagement.

Solutions to this problem are being worked on, as we look for new ways to do things online. In this article we will go through some of the options that work for the different needs of hybrid, distributed and fully remote teams.

Illustration by Olenka Malarecka via Dropbox

Remote, hybrid, and distributed teams: what’s the difference?

Models for work are changing, and the number of companies adopting remote, hybrid, and distributed team environments are increasing, driven both by demands for flexible working and the realities of the pandemic.

Each of the models offers different benefits and challenges when it comes to managing teams. 

We’re sure you are familiar with the concept of remote teams as chances are, you’ve worked in one across the pandemic.

Essentially, working from home or anywhere that isn’t a traditional office, and where no team member is co-located. Already endemic to certain industries, remote working has been necessitated by the pandemic, and many have adapted to and even prefer this flexible style of working to the traditional commute-work-commute model. 

Some companies such as Spotify, Twitter, Dropbox and Coinbase have already announced they will allow employees to work remotely forever, if they please.

A hybrid team, however, is a mixture of traditional office working with some team members working from the one location, while other colleagues remain working remotely from home. This setup is often dynamic, with teams working on rotation, for example spending two days in the office with colleagues and three days working from home.

In a hybrid model, some team members may see each other in person more regularly than others, which creates its own challenges when managing your team’s relationships.

We expect to see a substantial increase in the number of companies adopting the hybrid team model over the coming years, as it offers the best of both worlds to employees while also providing a safer way to stagger their return to the office. 

Another increasingly common set-up is distributed teams which is usually adopted by larger corporations, particularly those with tech teams. Distributed teams are different to hybrid teams in the sense that distributed teams work in geographically separate pods or work groups which are unlikely to ever end up in the same location, except perhaps for the annual conference.

In distributed teams, employees will usually be located across various countries and timezones, have different work areas, and might do a mixture of traditional office working and remote working in their particular location. 

Now that we’ve summarised these three different ways of flexible working, we’re going to take a quick look at the various types of online team building games that work best for each of these team types.

Online team building games for remote teams

In some ways, remote teams probably pose the least challenges when it comes to online team building, as at least everyone is in the same boat, and you are bringing together colleagues that are familiar with working together and collaborating online.

Most employees will be craving connection with their colleagues, and so any activity which prioritises participating in small teams over individual exercises is going to work better.

Escape rooms, creative tasks and competitions, along with social problem solving games are a great option for this style of work.

When organising activities for remote teams, it’s best to stick with the conference platform that your team is most familiar with, however if you’re a little more flexible and jump between platforms, we’ve written a helpful comparison of Zoom and Microsoft Teams for running team building games requiring breakout rooms.

Online team building activities for hybrid teams

With a hybrid team, you want to keep in mind that not all your employees are in the same place, and you might also need to ensure that colleagues who see each other often are not necessarily playing together.

You want those working home to feel just as included as the employees who are currently sitting in the office. We’ve run our online game The Trip with lots of hybrid groups, and you can still enjoy this virtual team building activity, even if you’re blending in-person and online. 

For hybrid teams, you want to keep in mind that each team needs to have at least one device. You could put your co-located physical employees into one team in your office with one shared device and add your remote employees to a virtual team.

We still recommend trying to keep group sizes small to around 4-5 employees to keep it competitive. If you’re going to be hosting teams in person, you want to make sure they can’t hear or see each other. No cheating!

Online team building for distributed teams

With distributed teams, the most important thing to keep in mind is potential cultural and time-zone differences. If opting for a live session, it’s usually best to go with shorter games that you can play in under an hour.

We offer short energiser games to our members under the umbrella name “Unpuzzled”, that combine problem solving and trivia for a great team warm up.

You may need to host your online team building game in the morning for one team and the evening for another, so shorter is best.

You’ll want to try to find a time when all your employees will be working so that you don’t cut into their personal time, otherwise you risk this influencing attendance.

Another interesting online team building option for distributed teams is activities which include both synchronous and asynchronous communication, or which offer the team the flexibility to coordinate their own schedule across a series of days.

For example, a multi-day day challenge like The Remote Rendezvous that includes short live video calls to bookend the program, with actual participation in the challenges or activities happening over the 5 days, can be a great way to engage distributed teams without interfering too much with their working day. 

Activities relying on problem-solving or logic work better for distributed teams as trivia or pop culture quizzes could exclude some of your team members. Activities relying on logic or problem solving games also work well for groups that work in multiple languages.

Activities like The Hunt are designed to be inclusive for all players, with straightforward instructions and a universal theme. We recommend choosing your teams beforehand and mixing the groups so that employees who work in different locations have a chance to get to know each other better. 

Whether you work with a hybrid, distributed or fully remote team, there are plenty of ways that you can help to maintain group culture, just make sure that you choose your activities carefully with the needs of your particular working style in mind!

If ever in doubt - feel free to contact us to discuss which game would be most suitable for your team.