She suspected that being tethered to a fixed screen for meetings was a root cause. Now, when she attends a virtual meeting, she first asks whether her camera really needs to be on. For a client meeting, the answer will usually be yes, but for many internal meetings, other participants don’t need to see her. She takes those meetings on her phone and walks around her neighborhood. Dark times call out for moments of shared laughter with coworkers. Nothing works better to generate laughter than virtual fun and humorous icebreakers.

It’s not morbid, many people love opening up and sharing what they hope to experience one day. Hearing someone’s dream of seeing the Northern Lights with their family, or completing a novel, this activity creates boundless conversation starters. Maybe your teams could discover someone with a similar dream. This quick activity holds great potential for personal ambitions. When it comes to connecting and playing games with your team, any game can be great. Just like icebreaker questions, choosing the right one can be challenging, but don’t overthink it.

• But to get the best out of your team, you need more than five-minute energisers.
• These icebreakers are designed to spark humor, unleash your team’s weirdest thoughts, and remind everyone that work can be fun, too.
• This activity promotes team building as members work together to complete challenges and earn points.
• One participant shares something about themself, such as a like, dislike, hobby, or trait (e.g., “I love climbing volcanoes”).
• Virtual ice breakers with more than 10 participants can become unwieldy and time-consuming.

Best Employee Engagement Ideas in 2024 (Remote + Free)

Collaborate instantly with your team, provide feedback, and refine agendas together. Bit’s real-time editing allows multiple team members to work on the same document simultaneously, making meetings more interactive and productive. Plus, with inline comments and @mentions, discussions happen right where they’re needed—no need for long email chains or scattered feedback. Thanks to COVID I think we’ve all overdosed on virtual meetings to some extent, especially during the early days of the pandemic. For most of us having NO face-to-face meetings during lock down was a new phenomenon.

Three Things We Share is an icebreaking activity with thoughtfulness kept in mind. Very often, the best teams are made up of diverse members with unique insights and perspectives. If your large team has many international members, using “Teambuilding on the map” is a great way to get conversations flowing. Add a bit of humor and curiosity, giving teammates a sneak peek into each other’s remote workday and browsing habits.

Improv Story Time

Your coworkers likely know a few jingles they either love or can’t stand. You could even quickly search for the commercial jingles on YouTube so everyone can hear them for a laugh. Say something encouraging or meaningful after each person goes. After all, sharing something negative and receiving no reaction can feel disappointing. Additionally, “Two-Word Check-In” helps you eliminate the question, “How are you doing? That question always elicits the same automatic and socially conditioned response of “good” or “fine,” whether true or not.

Go around your virtual room, inviting everyone to share their bright moment or experience. This could be an event, a gesture, a personal achievement, or anything positive from their past week. Please be mindful that not everyone may want to contribute or that some people have had tough weeks prior, and invite only, not tell people to share. After each person shares, let your team discuss and engage in a fun and interactive way about different movies and shows.

Share your workspace

• Your coworkers likely know a few jingles they either love or can’t stand.
• The meeting organizer has to send a survey or a poll consisting of questions such as favorite film, food, music, your ideal holiday, or a unique fact about yourself.
• In the Four Quadrants activity fun game, each team member is given space for drawing the answers to four questions you’ll ask.
• However, this can become a thing of the past when you introduce virtual icebreakers to get everyone talking, laughing, and bonding in no time.

They’re designed to keep the dialogue going, encourage more personal sharing, and help build lasting connections. Think of icebreakers as the opener and conversation starters as the bridge to a more engaging exchange. Facilitators most commonly use icebreakers to create connections between people that don’t know each other. But you can also use icebreakers with seasoned teams to boost the energy at the start of any remote workshop, meeting, or new project. As we draw this discussion to a close, it’s important to reflect on the significant impact that ice breakers have on virtual meetings. These seemingly simple activities hold the power to transform a mundane virtual gathering into an engaging, productive, and memorable event.

In this game, each member has a short time limit, say within 10 seconds, to name something that fits the category. Learning about the movie tastes of each person in your group is also a way to understand your coworker’s personalities and interests and find common ground. This is key for companies to drive employee engagement, the level at which people feel committed to their jobs. Icebreakers can help solve these challenges by allowing team members to connect beyond the work they have to do on a video call. To browse our entire collection of icebreaker templates, check out the Butter Template Gallery. “This activity helps to set a learning tone and a more open mindset.

Difficulty in Building Rapport and Camaraderie

The goal is then to reach a destination Wikipedia page as quickly as possible, using only Wikipedia’s internal links. Join live sessions featuring real use cases shared by our users. HeyTaco is trusted by over 1,000 teams, from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies, and has been recognized with few awards. A more thorough understanding of a coworker’s perspective and responsibilities always helps a team operate more smoothly.

Either make this game the agenda for introductions or use it as a side activity to break apart long meetings so that you can retain your attendees’ focus. Bingo is often used as an interactive way to engage attendees and break up the monotony of long meetings. Virtual bingo cards are easy to create and the game can be played either as a side activity or as a planned part of the meeting agenda. While this question might not immediately break the ice, it opens the door to casual conversation and helps participants feel more comfortable sharing.

But games are still great for adding levity to your get-togethers. Paired with other culture-building programs in your organization, they can help build relationships and bring your team closer together. This activity can be just as fun for adults as for children. Invite team members to present an object that has a personal significance to them, and give them each a few minutes to explain. This can tell you something about their personal beliefs and values and foster deeper relationships in your team.

Talking about a specific holiday may accidentally exclude some people on ice breakers for virtual meetings your team. Get around that problem by asking people to discuss their favorite family meal from any holiday. Food makes memories in every culture, so everyone will probably have an answer they’ll look forward to sharing. Encourage everyone to talk about a board game they loved playing as a kid.

After ten minutes, every interviewer shares their interviewee’s superpower back with the main group. One participant shares something about themself, such as a like, dislike, hobby, or trait (e.g., “I love climbing volcanoes”). The others will signal whether they share that characteristic by turning their cameras on or off to agree or disagree. Once guesses are in, the fact owner reveals themselves and tells the backstory. Using an anonymous poll, everyone submits a fact about themselves that others might not know. The rest of the group then tries to guess which fact belongs to whom, one fact at a time.

Participants are given a list of items to choose from and must work together to decide which items will help them stay alive. By growing our emotional vocabulary, we can better identify our emotions, and check in with ourselves. Doing so can help bring a level of self-awareness, and a better understanding of others. Start by getting the whole team on camera and ask everyone to observe other team members closely. Next, ask everyone to turn off their camera and change three things in 30 seconds. They might change something about their appearance, perhaps with a hat or costume change, or move something in the background!

This activity works well on video calls because it adds a visual, personal touch that sparks authentic conversations. Plus, it’s a lighthearted way to check in with your team’s emotional well-being. For best results, pair these questions with Chat Waterfall, call on people to speak or break people into smaller groups to talk among themselves. Dropping a question into a group without structure or clear rules of engagement can be met with an awkward silence. I prefer to use these kinds of ice breaker questions in breakout rooms or in smaller groups and to tailor the specific questions to fit the team I’m working with. The depths of the internet is full of options, but to inspire you, we recently discovered Bored – a suite of Slack games for remote teams.