The challenge for firms or organizations with multiple offices across the United States, or even scattered throughout the world, is how to provide team members opportunities to get to know each other better on a different level outside of their daily professional tasks. With travel restrictions in place, budget constraints, and employees’ resistance to traveling, the solution is not to de-prioritize team building, but rather to come up with ways to team build among these geographically separate teams. This is where virtual team building comes in.
Our clients range from those with one office to multiple offices across the US to offices scattered throughout the world. The goal for all these clients was to help develop relationships with employees that are geographically apart, but work closely together on projects. They wanted to give them some time outside of their daily tasks so that they could get to know one another. Sometimes, there would be prizes involved to encourage the competitiveness within the teams.
A national law firm wanted to give their attorneys an opportunity to team build. We worked with them to develop a single elimination tournament made up of 32 teams that spanned across the US. Players could set their own teams, or could choose to be placed randomly on other teams to be sure everyone who wanted could particpate. To ensure that players stay in the game, there were 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes for the teams to compete for. All this took place in a matter of 3 weeks. All the teams had fun and the feedback from our client was that it was a great experience for all that played, as it got them to get to know another member of the organization either within the same office or a different location - something they would not have been able to do on a daily basis.
A firm with employees in different parts of the world wanted to throw a virtual retirement party for one of their employees. The retiring employee had managed and worked very closely with the international arm of their company. As such, there were a lot of employees from across the world that wanted to be a part of the retirement party. With travel restrictions in place, we stepped in to facilitate the party. With it being a retirement party, we customized the content to celebrate the accomplishments of the retiree, and had everyone participating across the globe contribute their well wishes through one of our activities.
With recent hires in two different countries, the U.S. team wanted to make sure that they would transition well within the teams and get to know the U.S. colleagues better. They hired us on a subscription basis where the team would meet on a monthly basis to team build. For each event, we would customize the script, keeping in mind the different cultures from the participants, as well as incorporating what worked well and what didn’t work well from previous events so that we could make the next event even better.
If you have multiple offices scattered throughout the US or the world, getting the team together should no longer be a challenge. Think virtual team building, and keep us in mind.