10 extraordinary hybrid team building ideas

Nowadays, while some employees prefer to stay home and continue working remotely, others hurry to the office or choose a hybrid work environment. Once you are building a people-oriented company culture for a hybrid team, the following team building ideas should be extremely useful.

Regular team meetings help employees stay connected regardless of where they are based. In this article, we’ll describe several proven hybrid team building activities and give inspiring examples of how interactive virtual tools and apps are applied.

What does Hybrid Team Building look like?

Hybrid team building means connecting employees from both office and virtual environments. That’s why hybrid team meetings involve some of the members who join video conference from their workplace, and remote workers who join from home or other locations. The idea is to arrange such a setting where people will be able to interact on an in-person level, even at a distance.

The hybrid team building activities may vary but all of them pursue common goals. Not only do they build stronger relationships within a team but they also improve employees’ productivity, engagement, and retention.

Before hosting an event as hybrid, it’s essential to define its' objective. Will it be an informative meeting, an engaging game requiring a high level of collaboration, or just a fun time spent together?

Below you can find some extraordinary hybrid team building ideas that will make employees feel more relaxed, motivated, and productive throughout the workday!

Funny And Engaging Hybrid Team Building Ideas For Your Next Meeting

Virtual field trip

Corporate trips have always been among the most common and adored activities among employees. Days before the virtual gathering, prepare a questionnaire for your team to find out what place they want to visit virtually: a museum, theatre, or maybe city sightseeing?

Choose the online tour and prepare to get a great dose of insights and inspiration! Also, you can add a quiz game on top of the virtual trip. Have a look at the sample The Quiz Channel.

Daily yoga classes & workouts

Create a hybrid environment for everyone to see, hear, and give feedback. It could be a live yoga with a personal tutor leading the session with exercises, or something different, such as laughing yoga or breading yoga.

Learning something new

Before hosting a meeting, ask employees to come up with a topic (art, music, history, etc.) which they’re best at and prepare a presentation using a simple video maker, or just discuss some exciting facts during the call.

Out-of-the-ordinary team building tasks like this will boost the team’s overall creativity and enhance their viewpoint.

Escape rooms

As well as remote dinners, escape rooms are popular in hybrid team building exercises. One of the best parts of escape rooms is that your teammates can solve puzzles, mysterious tasks, and other fun activities, all via online platforms.

There are many websites that have created an engaging online environment for employees to solve puzzles and, play other fun games together even at a distance! All you need to do is create a physical office and online escape game version. Remote and online teams would start at the same time. Check out the guide on how create an attractive virtual escape room at SpatialChat.  

Tea, coffee, cocktail, or dinner party

Another extraordinary hybrid team building event you may consider is a virtual tea, coffee, cocktail, or dinner party. We recommend to send out a mini package to your team members prior to the online gathering.

Firstly, choose a recipe with several ingredients: it may even be a completely new one, which you can call after your company name! Then, send your employees a party bo with the ingredients or prepare a list of needed goods. Give a microphone to a host, and here we go... You can also consider meditation or sharing your thoughts about certain flavours of soft beverage during the call.

Walking Challenge

Daily step challenges are one of the easiest hybrid team building activities. Simply make it a company-wide goal for every employee to reach at least 4,000 steps every day.  They can monitor the progress with a pedometer or an app. Create a spreadsheet where teams can add daily progress, and for extra fun, give awards for the individual goal, team goals, and so on...

Networking or speed dating

Quick chat between colleagues about weekends or top 3 tasks to accomplish this week. According to the number of employees, everyone receives a number from 1 to "x". Create a networking schedule (see an image below) with two matching numbers and share it with the team. Employees know only their numbers but they need to look for the Round match to begin the conversation. It might be someone from the office or someone who works remotely.

For example, if I am matched with someone from the remote team, I go to SpatialChat, look for the right match, and start a conversation.

Keep your networking rounds short: it will give more extensive team engagement and conversations, for example, 5 min, including the searching part.

Find the Wally

Play "Find the Wally": hid the Wally in the office, explain the rules, and here we go. Employees need to find the Wally in the first room, take a picture, and show where it was. If everything is correct, guide participants to the next room. Meanwhile, remote team members can also join  SpatialChat virtual platform to look for the Wally, find the code, and open next rooms. Check out the samples below.

Art Challenge

Prepare tasks for the art challenge: for example, draw your breakfast or a resting place. Employees use A4 paper and all they can draw with.
When the art challenge is announced, employees have 10 minutes to finish the art and submit the result to an internal communication group. Then the most voted image is selected and awarded. Try the same activity in hybrid brainstorming session to gather ideas.

Wheel of fortunes

Click to spin the wheel and pick a competition winner! A fun app for remote offices, teachers, classrooms, raffles, and contests! Find a great example here Wheel of Fortune.

Conclusion

Managing a hybrid team could be challenging sometimes. One of the most common complaints from employees is they lack regular daily communication with their peers. In this regard, the hybrid team building activities on virtual platforms, including SpatialChat, upgrade capabilities to spend time together from afar.

We listed ideas that will not only connect hybrid teams but also foster their motivation and collaboration spirit. Though an engaging hybrid team building event may require some time and resources, it certainly empowers a people-oriented company culture and benefits the company.

Helpful materials

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