Maybe you work in the office and your team or company is transitioning to working remotely, maybe you’ve always been remote, maybe you’re in a hybrid role, maybe your team includes people across multiple locations and time zones. Whatever the reason, you may want to look into virtual teambuilding events.

In the office, it’s easy to get a lot of face time with your team, or even different teams that you’d almost never interact with. When I first joined the startup, there were around 15 employees. We worked out of a small, open concept office, where we had plenty of opportunities to have quick side conversations, share an interesting piece of information we came across, or tell a joke. When the pandemic hit, we switched to working from home. Thankfully we had all built good relationships with each other and the transition to working from home felt seamless.

After a few weeks, of communicating exclusively over Slack, and a weekly Google Meet, we started to notice some very basic miscommunications popping up. The pandemic was also creating a growing sense of not knowing what was coming next among individual contributors, given how hard the economy had taken a hit in 2020. The pandemic didn’t cause many problems for us, we actually closed our pre-seed funding round later that year and hired quite a few more people. But a growing team of unfamiliar faces working remotely meant that we needed to be very intentional with how we welcomed new people and helped them build connections with their coworkers.

Team leads and managers brought concerns to the senior leadership team, and soon a budget was set for teambuilding activities.

There are a lot of reasons why you might want to look into teambuilding events. Building trust within your team, creating a sense of familiarity with other teams, building morale, and generally getting to know your people better.

Working remotely, your team might not get a lot of opportunities to share a joke or a fun anecdote. Setting up virtual teambuilding events can help teammates get to know each other better by having some scheduled time to just relax and hang out. Friendships are built on time and exposure. Intentionally carving out the time will help your team build a sense of camaraderie.