24 Remote Team Engagement Ideas, Activities, & Strategies for Connection in the Virtual Workplace

How do you read the room from behind a screen? Are you imposing when you set up a meeting with a remote employee? Is your feedback welcome, and do they know theirs is?

Virtual teams need additional effort to be securely hooked into the company network. Use some of today’s remote team engagement ideas to help employees feel sure of their purpose and place within the collective.

What’s the difference between employee engagement and team engagement?

Team engagement is one-third of total employee engagement. Overall employee engagement metrics describe how connected one is to their work, organization, and team.

Employee engagement is the sum of:

• Work engagement. This is how an employee feels about their role in particular. How they execute it, their confidence in doing so, and their satisfaction with the results.
• Organizational engagement. How the employee feels about their employer. Assessing and aligning with the company’s values, benefits, ethics, culture, and leadership.
• Team engagement. The one we’re talking about today. The level of support, participation, understanding, and pride that an employee associates with their community of coworkers.

Is it more difficult to engage remote teams?

Remote workers are known to enjoy higher levels of work engagement. The autonomy inherent in many virtual jobs is ideal for maintaining focus, coming up with new solutions, and building on strengths.

However, team bonds and organizational engagement are tougher to come by in a virtual environment. Surveys report that while engaged, remote workers are more likely to feel loneliness, sadness, and anger. More than half of remote employees keep an eye out for other jobs.

Stronger team connections can resolve much of this. Feeling that one can rely on a coworker for support or help relieves the stressful parts of autonomy. When a task or tool is frustrating, they have people to turn to for answers.

Bonded remote teams also feel they have an identity within a recognizable workplace culture. They have sufficient interaction and shared values to associate their job with a group, not the solo WFH grind.

4 Types of virtual team engagement activities

Don’t set up a virtual water cooler and wait for camaraderie to ensue. Mixing in two to all four types of virtual employee engagement activities is a better way to cover everyone’s needs.

1. One-on-one meetups

Smaller group chats and one-on-one linkups are good settings for a few reasons. First, some employees may be hesitant to raise an issue during a larger meeting. Connect employees in similar roles or the same department. They can commiserate or offer workarounds for the job’s little snags.

Second, to foster familiarity and awareness of the company as a collective. Connecting to one or two humans at a time makes remote employees feel less isolated. They gradually associate more names, personality traits, and roles with their company.

2. Team-building activities

Trivia tournaments, happy hours, two truths and a lie. Many traditional team-building activities can be carried out virtually for trust-building, problem-solving, and a healthy measure of fun.

Include and rotate various types of team-building. A virtual lunch-and-learn can help coworkers refine their skills together, getting the benefit of one another’s perspectives.

3. Interest-based groups

Strava users, gamers, musicians, film buffs, home bakers, and more. Make getting to know an employee’s interests part of the onboarding process. Connect employees who have similar hobbies and skills so that they can share.

This is huge for larger companies with team members who don’t have a lot of collaboration opportunities. Employees create connections with like-minded coworkers, enhancing that sense of belonging.

4. Peer recognition tools

Peer recognition tools build praise into workflows. When someone has a great idea, helps someone out, or encourages others, they get instant positive feedback from coworkers.

Being validated by peers doesn’t just make people feel like they belong to the team. It motivates employees to continue performing those positive actions and to recognize others’ small wins. It also helps build rapport, making those coffee pairings and interest groups a lot less awkward.

15 Remote team engagement ideas to try this month

Everyone’s used to being online. Interacting on social media is a daily habit for millions. Building a community of people who have never met in person isn’t as challenging as it might have been a decade or two ago.

Try these engagement activities for remote teams and watch as employees form easy, natural connections that increase engagement:

1. Home office tours

Employees can share videos showing off their workspace.

2. Virtual escape rooms and museum tours

When you’re remote, all team-building is off-site. Take a virtual field trip!

3. Spreadsheet pixel art competition

Try any small challenge that 1) uses the tools everyone’s familiar with and 2) involves friendly competition.

4. Quarterly care package program

Participating employees are paired off to exchange care packages every quarter.

5. Guest workshops with industry experts

Virtual TED-style talks, webinars, and workshops show interest in the growth and development of remote teams.

6. Live coworking hours

Some teams may like to livestream together as a form of collaboration or to keep one another on task.

7. Team-led meetings recapping everyone’s week

This leader-free meeting gives teams a chance to share progress and get insight from one another without fear of judgment.

8. #Welcome channel for introductions

New hires will feel less wary of asking questions in a channel dedicated to orienting them with their peers.

9. Company history trivia

Build organizational engagement by sharing more interesting facts, experiences, and anecdotes about the company.

10. Save room for peer shout-outs

Invite employees to shout out a helpful, funny, or kind coworker at the end of meetings.

11. Playlists

Play music during certain meetings or collaborative livestreams, and give everyone a chance to add to it.

12. Company bucket list

If you could change one thing about your job, what would it be? What’s one skill or achievement you’d most like to attain while at this company? Put it on your bucket list.

13. Reflection hours

Instead of having virtual teams dive directly into the next thing, give them some time to reflect and discuss what they’ve just completed.

14. Guess who?

Instead of a standard icebreaker, share an anonymously submitted random fact about a team member. Have everyone place their bets on who it is.

15. Shoulders-up costume contest

Make Zoom meetings fun every once in a while. Have everyone dress up, but only from the shoulders up.

5 Remote employee engagement strategies

Building culture and team cohesion is your best option for getting ahead of remote work’s retention problems. These approaches can make employees feel more comfortable sticking with your organization.

1. Turn the camera on sometimes.

Whether you hear about it or not, cameras-on during meetings is a hot-button issue among remote workers. Make cameras optional, and some employees will never turn them on. Make it mandatory, and they feel like they’re under your thumb.

Instead, make it a tradition that cameras are optional for one type of meeting, but strongly recommended for another. It’s a middle ground that fewer people could ever complain about.

2. Let them create the energy that drives the culture.

Have teams decide on and perform their own rituals. A midday seated stretch or recap of last night’s episode, anything they do together is important. Do not iterate on low-participation, company-led activities.

Values champions, like your top taco giver, are helpful here. Ask them to shout out others at meetings or pick an activity. Rotate this out to avoid the appearance of favoritism.

3. Incorporate more fun.

Research suggests that remote employees are more prone to burnout. Fun relieves stress. Less stress, less burnout. Moreover, fun is easier to have when you’re not alone.

Here’s where participation from leaders truly counts. Many employees likely feel they need permission to have a little fun. Studies show that humor is the most authentic, impactful way to lighten the mood at work. Think paper plate awards, memes, and other activities on the sillier side.

4. Celebrate milestones.

Milestones are an underrated participation driver. Celebrating work anniversaries in the team chat is an accessible, low-stakes, zero-pressure way for remote workers to interact.

5. Get into mentorship.

The buddy system is a popular tool on remote teams, especially during someone’s first few months. However, shedding that contact might correlate to a dip in that employee’s engagement, once they’re “settled in.”

Keep creating new connections. Foster a growth culture in a virtual environment with a mentorship program. Mentees can set new goals that help root them in place. Mentors will find that their experiences and wisdom are more appreciated and valued than they thought.

Psst! Over here! Get more inspiration from this list of employee engagement ideas.

HeyTaco: The fun way to engage with global teams

Virtual engagement activities don’t require a lot of planning or moderation. HeyTaco was designed to put engagement in the hands of employees.

Each day, employees receive five virtual tacos 🌮 of appreciation. Employees distribute them to their coworkers as a lighthearted-but-heartfelt form of recognition. This practice helps recognition become an active habit, one that catches on easily.

Companies like Eugeniuses use it to create belonging on remote teams. With dozens of employees flung all over the globe, they needed a positive way to connect.

“Everyone knows what they need to do for work, but it’s the personal connections that are harder to maintain,” explains their project manager. “It’s not just about the tasks—it’s about the relationships we build along the way.”

Increase remote team engagement one taco at a time with your free trial.

Remote team engagement FAQ

How are team building and team engagement different?

Team-building refers to exercises, activities, and other group events. The goals are to increase trust, rapport, problem-solving, and communication.

Team engagement is one way to describe the results of team-building efforts. We maximize team connection to ensure the individual employee has a favorable experience on that team. Their participation, enthusiasm, and productivity reflect their engagement with colleagues.

What mistakes hurt remote team engagement?

The biggest mistakes companies make include not factoring in time zones, interrupting work with mandatory meetings and activities, or being inconsistent with any type of recognition.

Another common mistake involves feedback. Companies will insist they welcome it, but never implement change based on employee feedback.

How do I engage remote teams in different time zones?

Rotating meeting times so everyone has a chance to join live is considerate. Recording meetings for those who cannot attend also makes sense. Team chat channels for gratitude, shared interests, or watercooler discussions can also be accessed at their convenience.

How do I measure virtual team engagement?

Participation rates, completion rates, and pulse surveys are a good start. Also assess the quality and responsiveness of remote worker communications. If you use HeyTaco, we provide reporting and real-time analytics that can help measure engagement.