In the Remote Work Era, it’s harder to foster the teamwork you’d get from a traditional office environment. While people in traditional office settings might build friendships and connect face-to-face, remote workers can’t chat in front of a water cooler. To mitigate this problem, we at Content Cucumber have a Virtual Office every week. During these sessions, team members connect over Zoom for some team-building games and fun chitchat.
Today on the Content Cucumber Blog, we want to spread the wisdom of the Virtual Office and present you with some fun games to play with your team members.
The Importance of Morale
Before we get into games, we need to discuss why we play these games. According to the American Psychological Association (APA), how happy you are at work drastically affects your overall happiness. Whereas happy employees were twice as likely to report strong relationships, financial security, good physical health, and better community engagement, unhappy workers were twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression.
Even if you don’t care about your employee’s mental health (which, really, you should), you should know that bad morale hurts your bottom line. That same APA article discusses how unhappy employees end up costing their employers more in sick time and vacation days. Moreover, happiness is actually more important to productivity than the number of hours worked. The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) compared the workforces of Greece and Germany. The German workers,who worked an average of 21 hours a week compared to Greece’s 42,were 70% more productive overall.
Since remote businesses can’t provide a lot of the traditional office perks, it’s important to get creative. That’s the importance of our Virtual Office sessions.
What Makes a Game Work for Virtual Office Sessions?
While we can’t provide you with an exhaustive list, we can share our criteria for picking good Virtual Office games. In general, you’ll want to take these criteria into account:
- Is it accessible? It wouldn’t be very helpful if a percentage of your employees can’t participate. For best results, these games should be accessible and playable through a browser or free mobile app, or not require technology at all. Ideally, you’ll also want to accommodate any disabilities your employees may have.
- How many people can participate? Depending on your team’s size, you may have a hard time making sure everyone gets to participate. If games have fast rounds, then you can have players switch off between rounds. This becomes increasingly difficult with longer games.
- Is it fun? Of course, the fun is the whole point! If your game frustrates or alienates your team members, then it’s probably doing more harm than good. Try to figure out which elements are upsetting, and avoid other games with those elements.
The Games
Of course, Virtual Office would be no fun without the games to go with it! Here are some of our favorites.
Jackbox Games
Popular amongst gamers, streamers, and Virtual Office attendees, Jackbox Party Packs reign supreme as the ultimate virtual party game. With seven installments in the series, there’s no shortage of fun games you can play with your team.
Though they aren’t free (the most recent installment costs between $20-$30 depending on which platform you use), only one person needs to buy the game and share their screen for the whole team to play. Everyone else goes to Jackbox.TV, and enters the four-digit room code and a name.
Though there’s a limit to how many people can actually play along, Jackbox always includes options for audience participation. This means no one gets left out. Still, it’s a good idea to switch out players between games.
Google Feud
If you enjoy the game show Family Feud and laughing at internet shenanigans, Google Feud is a great game for all group sizes.
The object of the game is to finish a prompt based on what you think Google’s autocompleting feature would suggest first. For example: if the prompt was “how to raise,” you might guess “how to raise children” or “how to raise a ladder.” The game would then assign you points based on how close your guess was to the most searched option. If you fail to guess one of the top options, you get a strike. Three strikes, the round’s over.
Though there isn’t an in-built multiplayer function, you can easily make the game suitable for your entire team. You can all work together, or divide the attendees into teams and manually keep the separate teams’ scores.
Among Us
Among Us is a popular game with both free and paid versions. All you need is to download the game through Steam or your phone’s app store and have all the participants join a Zoom call. There, you can share the room code and have up to ten players join.
At the beginning of the round, the game will randomly assign one or two players as the Imposter. The Imposter’s goal is to eliminate all the other players (or Crewmates). The Crewmates are trying to suss out the Imposter while completing a series of mini-games.
The catch is that players can only talk during designated meetings. The Imposter has to play a game of deception: hiding their status while stealthily picking off the others. Meanwhile, everyone else has to play detective and collaborate to vote on who they think the Imposter is. If they’re right, the Imposter is eliminated. If they’re wrong, then an innocent Crewmate is eliminated.
The game ends when the Imposter has eliminated the other players (Imposter Wins), the other players complete all the mini-games (Crewmates Win), or the Imposter is voted off (Crewmates Win). The only downside is that this game,like other hidden role games,can get a little dicey if the players aren’t all on the same page. Even though this is a game about deception, you should clearly communicate what behavior is or isn’t acceptable (no name-calling, no swearing, etc.)
Conclusion
Though we can’t cover every game the internet has to offer, we hope these suggestions get you searching for the perfect game to use as a team-building exercise. Once you find an accessible and fun game for your team, you’ll see how much it can boost morale.