A Team Building Experiment In A Remote Workforce

How do you get a team to get to know each other and bond when they can’t have a chat over the kettle or pop out for lunch together?

We’re used to being based from home, however, we’re not used to ALWAYS being at home. Prior to the pandemic, we would have been meeting with clients and colleagues on regular occasions. It was on these occasions, especially when we had company-wide social events, that we would have some downtime to really get to know the person behind the colleague.

We’ve recruited a number of new employees over the past year, all of whom have never met their colleagues in person and so have had little chance to get to know them at all.

About 6 months ago, we were having an online company-wide team meeting and our Managing Director, Chantal, asked for thoughts on how we could make our work life as happy as possible and really bond as a whole team.

The idea of having a ‘fun’ session once a week was suggested, when we could have a laugh together, talk about non-work-related things and learn more about each other.

So, Happy Hump Day (Wednesday) was born. Our sessions are for the last ½ hour of the working day.

To date, we’ve had 14 very varied sessions. These have included several quizzes, baby, holiday, pet and car photo sharing (with some very amusing and enlightening back stories), a Generation Game style memory game, online games and apps and a truffle making class.

We thought it would be interesting see what our colleagues thought about Happy Hump Day - had it achieved what it set out to? So, we did a survey.

Our colleagues’ choices of favourite sessions were really varied, but the most popular was the truffle making session, followed by the memory game and a Catchphrase quiz.

The photo sessions gave everyone, but especially the newer recruits, new insights into our colleagues such as their sense of humour, what their hobbies are, where they’ve travelled, where they’re from and stories about their families. We also learned lots of facts about our colleagues we didn’t know before.

So, what have been the main benefits?

The overall consensus is that it has definitely helped us to get to know each other better and has brought a remote team closer together.

It allows us to ‘down tools’ and let people see and have fun with some of the team we wouldn’t necessarily chat to on a day-to-day basis. This in turn has raised morale.

We’re not sure how long the weekly sessions in their current format will last. Things may change when the time ‘feels right’. But for now, as in the last 6 months, we’ll look forward to having some very productive fun with our colleagues on a Wednesday at 5pm.