Online Virtual Team Building Games Remote Filipino Employees Will Enjoy!

Aside from working remotely, employees of today also adapted to playing online games or conducting team-building activities over video calls. Interactive games and regular team-building activities are a great way to not only energize employees working from home. They also help establish a bond or connection among your remote team members or those who haven’t met each other face to face yet. We’ve grown creative over the past few months in quarantine and our icebreakers during video meetings are only getting more and more fun!

The Shift to Virtual Work From Home Set Ups

Most companies have shifted to the work-from-home setup because of the pandemic. Employees no longer have to go to the office to get their job done or get paid based on how many hours they spend on-site. With a laptop and a reliable internet connection, it’s business as usual even when your employees are at home in their comfy home clothes spread out in different locations around the Philippines.

Now as convenient as working from home is, the experience can be quite isolating. Even if each employee is comfortable working from home, they will most likely experience fatigue and burnout, especially with an overwhelming workload, lack of social interaction, and the crippling anxiety of catching the virus if they go outside.

Virtual Team Building Activities for Remote Employees

Most of the games that I will share with you are games that my team here in the Philippines has played during our regular huddles. I seldom win any of these games, but it was always a good time to take a little break from work, let loose, and also channeling our competitive spirit especially if there are prizes at stake.

I will be explaining the mechanics of games as simply and directly as I can. The thing with virtual team-building games is you would have to be organized and do a lot of planning and work beforehand. I would recommend assigning a host to prepare the slides and materials, do the grouping of members if necessary, and also monitor the pointing system during the game itself to see who wins. Don’t worry, this blog is here to give you some ideas you can start with and you can use these to make sure that your players will have fun!

Online Buzzer

For games that require only one person to answer for the round, you’ll need to decide on an online buzzer. One typical option would be to display a code (e.g. ChristianForemost), and whoever types it out correctly in the chatbox first, gets to answer.

Another way to choose who will answer is to use BuzzIn Live which is an online buzzer that displays immediately who buzzed in first and also has a pointing system already. This isn’t free, but they do include a rate for one-time use.

If you’re using Microsoft Teams in your virtual game, their raise-hand feature already tracks the sequence of the participants who raised their hands. You could already see clearly who raise their hands first and you could also use this to come up with the participants for the round of the game.

Zoomed-In Picture Guessing Game

Mechanics: A zoomed-in and cropped image would be displayed on-screen and the participant would have to guess what item it is. The host can choose to keep zooming out the picture until any of the players finally guesses the item correctly. The player with the most correct guesses wins.

Da Who?

Mechanics: The host would collect funny, embarrassing, or juicy information or stories from each of the players through a survey or by stalking the players’ social media accounts. The info or story would be shown on-screen and the players would have to guess who among them the information or story is about.

This game is really fun especially if you wanna get to know your teammates on a very personal level. A lot of laughter, surprises, and secrets were revealed. I would highly encourage this game to those new teams who haven’t had the chance to meet each other in person! You guys will get to exchange stories, be candid and really get to know your team outside of work!

Singing Bee

Mechanics: A song will be played and the lyrics will be shown on-screen. After the song gets cut, the players would have to continue singing the song with the correct missing lyrics.

People love to sing and this game is a hit every time we play it. One tip for this is to not include the song title so that the players can’t easily google the lyrics of the song. Also, the host should highly encourage the player to belt out the song at the top of their lungs so that the other players will also be entertained!

Virtual Charades

Mechanics: Players will be divided into pairs. Player A will act out the mystery word on camera and Player B would have to guess the mystery word correctly. A time limit can be set and the pair who guesses the most number of mystery words before the time limit wins.

Pinoy Henyo

Mechanics: Players will be divided into pairs. Player A is given a mystery word. Player B would have to guess the mystery word by asking consecutive questions. Player A can only answer with “Oo” (Yes), “Hindi” (No), or “Pwede” (Can Be). The pair who guess the mystery word correctly in the shortest amount of time wins.

Read My Lips

Mechanics: Players will be divided into pairs. Player A will be given a mystery phrase. Player A will have to mouth or lipsync for Player B to guess the mystery phrase. A time limit can be set and the pair who guesses the most number of mystery phrases before the time limit wins.

Box of Lies

Mechanics: A Mystery Picture is sent to Player A and Player B would have to detect if Player A is telling a LIE or telling the TRUTH. Player A can choose to describe the mystery picture in detail or make up a total lie about the picture. Only when Player B has decided on their answer: “LIE” or “TRUTH” does the mystery picture gets revealed. If Player B’s answer is correct, they get the point. If Player B’s answer is wrong, Player A gets the point. There would also be a time limit for Player B to come up with a final answer.

Most Mystery Pictures are weird or out of context so it’s almost impossible to determine if the player is telling the truth or lying. This game would require an active imagination, acting skills, and a commitment to delivery for Player A. For Player B, they’ll need sharp detective skills and a strong intuition. Warning that this game may cause severe trust issues within the team. All in good fun though!

You can also play this game in teams. Group your members into two teams: Team A and Team B. Prepare Mystery Pictures for each member of the team to describe. Each member of the team would have the chance to lie or tell the truth about their Mystery Picture and the competing team would have to come up with a majority decision: “LIE” or “TRUTH” before the Mystery Picture gets revealed. If the competing team’s answer is correct, they get the point. If they don’t, the point would go to the team of the member who described the Mystery Picture.

I would recommend the host create two separate private group chats for the two competing teams and send the pictures beforehand.

Movie Trivia Night

Mechanics: Players would have to answer a number of trivia questions about fan-favorite or well-loved movies. The player with the most points wins. The format of questions can range from Multiple Choice, Fill in the Blanks, True or False, etc. Another fun twist you can try in this game is to get famous lines from the movie and have the players act them out for more points!

Two Truths and a Lie

Mechanics: Player A will share 2 facts about themselves and include one lie. Player B would have to guess which among the three is the LIE. Player B can interview or grill Player A about the facts A shared until B decides which one is the LIE.

Virtual Bring Me

Mechanics: An picture or name of an item will be displayed on the screen. Players would have to find their items inside their houses and show them on screen. The player who brings the correct item and shows it on the screen first wins.

Logo Quiz

Mechanics: A logo will be shown on the screen and players will have to guess which company or brand the logo belongs to. Logos can be zoomed in or some elements can be removed for the rounds to be more challenging.

Virtual Bingo

Mechanics:  Bingo is a game of chance in which each player has one or more cards printed with differently numbered squares on which to place markers when the respective numbers are drawn and announced by a caller. The first player to mark a complete row or other patterns of numbers is the winner.

Now you can host your own bingo game online by using the Let’s Play Bingo Website. The first thing to do is to generate the bingo cards using this card generator from the website depending on your desired number of participants and send them via email or in a shared folder. The game will take place in a video call with the caller sharing their screen with the Let’s Play Bingo Website. Once the winning pattern has been decided and shared, the caller will announce each lucky number. Instruct the participants to highlight if any of the lucky numbers are present on their cards. Whoever completes the winning pattern first can call out “BINGO” and win the game!

Questions Game

Mechanics: Ask your participants a series of hard-hitting questions under a time limit. You can set a 15 to 30-second time frame for them to think of their answer after the question has been raised. Whoever comes up with the best answer wins!

You can assign judges to score the answers of the participants from 1 to 5 or have the participants judge each other’s answers. The questions can be about any topic like politics, philosophy, morality, personal life or beliefs, etc. I would recommend coming up with funny or nonsense questions and having the participants come up with logical answers to the silly questions!

Guess the Song

Mechanics: Participants will guess the name of a song by only listening to snippets of the instrumental. The lyrics or words of the song cannot be shared. The participants will have to jog their memory and remember the song title the music belongs to.

Find the Hidden Emoji

Mechanics: Emojis have hidden somewhere insight these beautiful photographs. The participants would have to scan the images and find the emoji camouflaged within their pictures. Whoever finds the emoji first wins! This game is inspired by this article by Insider featuring photographs from couple Chanel Cartell and Stevo Dirnberger.

Kahoot

Kahoot is a trivia game available both in a desktop browser and as an app on your phone. Kahoot has a couple of trivia games about every topic of interest available. You could just pick one and then share the game code with your team. The team members can answer multiple-choice and true or false questions. Whoever answers the questions correctly fastest ranks higher and higher after every round.

You could also create your own Kahoot game on their website as well and have your players join in! Totally perfect for lectures or seminars as well if you wanna test your audience. Click here to check out the Kahoot website.

Quipsplash

Quiplash is the gut-busting battle of wits and wittiness! Just use your phone or tablet (no controllers needed) to answer simple prompts like these:

• Something you’d be surprised to see a donkey do
• A double rainbow doesn’t have gold at the end of it. Instead, it has ______.
• A better name for France

Mechanics: There are no rules or correct answers. You just say whatever you want! Your answer will be pitted against another player’s answer in a head-to-head battle. Other players – and even an audience of up to 10,000 people – then vote on their favorite answer. It’s that simple.

And yes, you read that right: while the game is for 3-8 players, it supports up to 10,000 active participants in the Audience, all of whom have the ability to affect the vote! More than 8 people at your party? Nobody has to sit out. Playing on a stream? Your viewers can join in and participate in the game. Click here to check out Quiplash

Virtual Games Brought our Remote Team Closer Together!

I transferred to a new company during the pandemic and have worked from home ever since. For more than a year, I haven’t visited the office or even had a chance to meet most of my teammates face-to-face. But even if we haven’t gone on a corporate retreat, outdoor team-building trip, or done the usual corporate bonding which is getting drunk after work, I still consider my team now to be the closest and tightest-knit bunch of people I enjoy working with every day.

Aside from getting to take a break from work, showcase our wits and skills and display healthy sportsmanship, I can honestly say that having these regular team-building activities sparks thrill and excitement which are much needed in our lives as corporate slaves. I know you guys will enjoy playing any one of these games as much as my team did so dial into your MS Teams or Zoom meetings, and turn your video cameras on! Let’s start the game. May the best player/s win!

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