Online Team Building

Online team building is a way of running things rather than a separate catalogue. Several formats from our ten families work at a distance with an adaptation of the design instead of a rewrite. The timings change, the size of the teams changes and the way instructions get given changes; the activity stays the same.

What doesn’t adapt well we say in advance: anything that lives on physical contact or on moving around, so Action, Desert and Urban, loses at a distance the part that makes it useful. Better to postpone it than to distort it.

Below are the thirteen we run online regularly: first the five most requested, then the others. Where there’s a video, it’s from the real activity: it lasts under a minute and says more than any description.

What you need

Nothing particular: the video conferencing platform you already use is enough, Zoom or Teams or whatever the company has. We don’t ask anyone to install software of ours, and the participants don’t need to prepare anything beforehand.

The length we suggest is between sixty and a hundred and twenty minutes: under an hour it’s hard to get into anything, and beyond two hours attention in front of a screen drops. It isn’t a rule, and if your window is a different one we’ll fit it.

The most requested

Escape Room

Timed puzzles inside a trail of web pages. It’s the format born in person that survived the move to a screen best, because the constraint of the clock works identically behind one.

→ The in-person version

Crossword

A crossword built on the company’s own facts and products, solved in teams on a shared grid. Nobody knows all the answers: either the heads go together or it doesn’t get finished.

→ The in-person version

World Tour

A trip around the world in stages: each team takes on challenges about the countries it crosses, between history, places and local habits. You visit, virtually, places nobody in the group has seen.

Escape the City

A treasure hunt through places explored remotely: landmarks, corners, details people usually look at without seeing. It’s the distance version of our urban format.

→ The in-person version

Murder Mystery Drinks

Each participant plays a character and is both investigator and suspect. It’s the classic team whodunnit, cut down to the length of a drink and taken onto a video call.

→ The in-person version

The others, worth watching on video

Team News

The team builds the running order of a company news programme. Everyone has their slot and prepares a two-minute report on an assigned subject; at the end it all gets edited together and watched. What’s left is a video the company can circulate.

Mosaic Team

A mosaic that comes together by putting everyone’s contributions side by side, with no tiles and no manual skill needed: each person produces their part and the picture only appears when they’re assembled. Rarely requested online, and we run it without any difficulty.

Corporate Song

You write a song together that tells the story of the company: first a brainstorm on the values, then the lyrics, then the recording. The writing sessions work well on a video call, and at the end there’s an object that circulates.

→ The in-person version

Laughter Yoga

A method for laughing without needing a joke, which works better at a distance than you’d think: the laughter crosses the screen anyway. It’s short, and it’s the simplest thing to put at the end of a long meeting.

→ The in-person version

Formula 1 Team

A virtual race for people who follow motorsport: challenges about drivers, circuits and the history of Formula 1, plus codes and puzzles. The teams work in separate rooms and come back together for the finish.

And also

Super Quiz

The most flexible of the thirteen: it holds up as an activity in its own right, as the close of a webinar or as a check after a presentation. It adapts in length, from half an hour to a whole morning.

→ The in-person version

Music Race Competition

A musical competition across the board. You don’t need to be a musician or to be able to sing: everybody brings in points with what they can do, and it’s precisely the variety of the rounds that brings out people who usually stay quiet. It holds large groups too, up to about a hundred participants.

→ The in-person version

Monopoly

A virtual board with challenges of different kinds, musical, sporting, artistic, culinary, all customisable around the company. The winning team is the one that holds culture, speed and coordination together.

If you’re looking for something else

These thirteen are the ones we get asked for. The full online catalogue is wider, and if you need a format that isn’t here we’ll set it up: ask, and we’ll tell you quickly whether it makes sense at a distance or whether it’s worth waiting until you’re in the same room.