Working from home has great benefits. It offers you the ability to work from anywhere in the world, choose your hours and be productive from the comfort of your home. However, employers or team managers need to put in extra effort to help teammates bond and engage when it comes to virtual teams. Virtual team-building activities are very useful in this regard. In this article, we’ve compiled a list of office party ideas that you can try with your team mates.
Whether you’re looking for a team-building activity or rewarding your team for a job well done or simply boosting morale, office parties are a great way to go. This article aims to help you decide on a theme for and organize the best virtual office party according to your needs.
Here is a list of the best virtual office party ideas.
- Welcoming Fall
- Chocolate Tasting
- Annual Office Awards
- Virtual Painting Party
- Virtual Video Game Party
- Gift Exchange Party
- The Great Guessing Game
- Scavenger Hunt
1. Welcoming Fall
Celebrate the changing season by hosting a virtual event to welcome fall. Have the attendees dress up according to the theme asking them to wear at least one thing related to fall, it can be a scarf, a pair of boots, a cardigan, a dark-colored lipstick, anything. You can also hire Anja Lee & Company to help organize a ‘dark chocolate apple crumble’ class; a virtual event where they ship out individual kits to members and teach them to make this gluten and dairy-free dessert using classic fall ingredients.
2. Chocolate Tasting
Does anybody even need a reason to eat some chocolate? Host a virtual chocolate-tasting party for your team yourself or hire Z. Cioccolato to virtually teach your team to temper chocolate and make 5 different chocolate candies available at their shop using the kits they’ll ship to each member. Not only will your team love the experience but they’ll also learn a new skill!
3. Annual Office Awards
Host an office-themed award show virtually! Create a jury, nominate people in certain categories and have people vote; just like a real award show. You can also have performances and skits to keep people entertained. This can be done at the end of the year just before the holidays. This is something your team will look forward to.
4. Virtual Painting Party
A virtual painting party is a fun activity your team will definitely enjoy! You can organize it yourself or hire a virtual event provider like Dragonfly Designs who will ship out premade kits to your team members and guide them using a host to paint a fun watercolor card. You can do it before any holiday and paint cards to give out on it or you can do it just for fun to exchange between colleagues!
5. Virtual Video Game Party
If you’ve got a team full of enthusiastic gamers, this one is definitely for you. Players can share a screen over Zoom or use the remote multiplayer options on Playstation or Xbox. You can also have a virtual video game party even if your team members aren’t big on GTA or FIFA. Chess and Scrabble are available for virtual playing and can be enjoyable activities for those less interested in typical video games.
6. Gift Exchange Party
A little bit like Secret Santa but for all seasons! Set a price limit and ask members to send gifts to each other (be sure to decide who will send a gift to whom beforehand to avoid any confusion). Teammates can open gifts virtually and guess which member got them a gift. You can also ask your team to do themed gifts or gifts from a certain category like food items or stationery.
7. The Great Guessing Game
Compile photos of members from their childhood. On the day of the party ask your team to guess who it is. The team has to first guess just from the picture and if they’re unable to then they get to ask three questions about the person. The person who guesses the greatest number of pictures correctly is declared the winner and gets a prize.
8. Scavenger Hunt
You can plan a scavenger hunt for your team yourself. Just make a list of certain commonplace things you think will be easily available to every team member. To play the game, set the time and ask them to find things from the list as fast as they can. You can also add a more professionally organized flair to your virtual scavenger hunt by hiring someone like Compass Outdoor Adventures to do it for you. This 90-minute-long event starts with a few icebreakers and goes on to assign teams that will solve up to 50 exciting challenges.
Conclusion
So, these were the office party ideas you can try with your colleagues. Virtual office parties are a fun way for teams to engage and get to know each other, making it similar to team building games. They create a positive impact on the team which translates into better performance. This article includes different ideas for office parties that fit all budgets and sizes. Happy partying!