With the recent outbreak of Covid-19, schools, businesses, restaurants, and entertainment venues like malls, cinemas and theatres are closing. Social distancing is strongly encouraged all around the world and many companies started working from home to reduce the chances of their employees getting infected.
It can be very tough to socialize when you work from home. A lot of employees don’t actually realize how much interaction they had throughout the day until they work from home.
But let’s be the glass-half-full type of people and look at it from a positive perspective. Working from home gives you a chance to be more productive by avoiding daily commuting, cut down your daily expenses, eat healthier, connect more with your family, spend more time with your pet and gives you the gift of spending your time wisely.
With all the qualities that working from home offers, communicating with your coworkers is important and needed for the business to keep going. If you are looking for fun ways to connect with your team, we gathered for you 10 tips on how to make remote work engaging while staying safe.
1- Emoji Feelings
Most of the businesses proposed daily company-wide quick meetings to keep the whole team aligned. By time, those meetings might start to get boring and that’s when emoji feelings activity should work. Emoji feelings is an activity where each team member shares how they feel using only emojis. Every day, a member is chosen to explain their emoji with the team and tell them why they are feeling this way.
This activity adds an emotional and fun touch to the meetings and makes the employees know that their feelings count. It also enhances chatting outside work-related topics and makes the meeting less boring,
2- Video Meetings
Instead of audio meetings, switch to video ones. Video meetings help people feel less isolated or separated from their coworkers and make them feel more involved by having the chance to see their coworkers and engage with them. Seeing your coworkers’ smiling faces and interacting with them would also help reduce the stress of quarantine and lets you catch up with them just like you used to do at the office.
3- Virtual Lunch
Are you missing those small talks at the lunch breaks? Have them back virtually with this virtual lunch activity. Let your team link up via video conferencing over lunchtime weekly or even once a month. Share together shots of your meals and show off your cooking or food presentation skills.
This activity brings back the team spirit and those loud giggles coming out from the break area. It could be done for 15-30 minutes over coffee if your company is made of teams in different countries with different time zones and lunch breaks.
4- Netflix Recommendations or Reviews
Can you imagine the amount of Netflix subscriptions that were made recently since social distancing? You don’t have to connect with your coworkers for any work-related topics. Synchronized Netflix watching could be a way to make reviews on a series or a movie you’ve all been watching. You can also start a Netflix recommendations list or Netflix reviews shared sheets.
This activity is great for getting employees closer. They will get to know each other more by knowing each one’s preferences and opinions about different shows.
5- Gif Battles
Create a sense of competition with this fun activity. Gif battles is an activity that can be done over Slack or any platform your business uses to connect teammates.
The battle should have a referee whose job is to choose a topic like “describe work from home” each team member has to post a gif within a limit of time for example 3 minutes. The battle could have several rounds where the goal is to have the team members pick the best gif per round. The one with a total number of votes wins the battle.
This activity is fun and competitive; it helps teammates play and compete remotely and creates memories and happy moments while working from home.
6- Team Playlists
Use Spotify, Apple Music, Anghami or any music platform to create and share random playlists with your team. You can create a stress-relief playlist, motivative playlist, chill playlist and more or let each team member create their own playlist with their favorite 3-5 hits and have the team rate it in a weekly “Best Musical Taste Award” competition.
7- Pet Photos Time!
A cute photo of a dog or a cat would draw a smile on everyone’s face. Make a pop-up request on Slack for all the pet owners on the team to post a photo of their pets. This activity won’t take much time but it will definitely add happiness to the work atmosphere. You can ask for the cutest photo, the weirdest one, the silliest one or the one when their pet ruined or stole something.
In a world where hand sanitizers and toilet paper are considered a rare find, your employees would be the happiest to receive a “stay safe set” as a gift from the company. Not only that, gifting, in general, would make your employees know how appreciated and supported they are. A gift could be board games, kitchen essentials baskets, a chocolate box, cupcakes, flowers or any thoughtful gift.
9- Online Courses
It’s never too late to learn something new. Take the quarantine as a chance to start learning with your coworkers. Engage with your team on an online course where they enhance their language skills, learn a new skill like presentation, negotiation or whatever skill you think your teams need to master. This will nourish their skills and make the best out of staying home.
10- Weekend Reviews
You can add a bit of socializing to that first meeting after the weekend. Let the team members share the highlight of their weekend, their new stay-at-home favorite activities, an online game or family fun times. This will not just add spirit to the meeting but will give everyone new ideas on how to enjoy the social distancing period without feeling bored.
We encourage you to support the current movement and follow the social distancing measures announced by your local authorities. Stay safe and maintain a happy spirit with your team while working from home.
We at Joi are strictly implementing a set of safety precautions to safeguard our customers, employees, suppliers, and agents. All our employees are working from home while our heroes ‘delivery agents’ are trained to apply ‘Contactless Delivery’ for all orders.
