What activities do you do as a team to remain engaged and connected remotely?
Rucha Joshi
26 replies
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Ben Cotte@ben_cotte
There are just 2 of us at the moment -- but still, we do synchronous weekly retrospectives (to start, to keep, to drop, to celebrate), to keep the motivation going. It is also a safe place to check if everything is going well.
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Thursday
@ben_cotte Setting up the foundations of a great culture :) Do you work together in person?
@rucha_joshi8 No, we always work remotely.
Thursday
@ben_cotte Super :)
Vmaker for Windows
Last Friday, we had a team bonding session which was fun. The idea is simple. There is a web-based free for all tool called sketchful.io
It's a visual form of dumb charades. Every team member has to draw an item on the screen, and others have to guess. People who have to guess the word only know the number of letters. There's also a time limit rule, so it adds to the fun and challenge
At the end, top 3 scorers take the podium. But, the others have a fun time too. So no one's a loser
Thursday
Vmaker for Windows
@rucha_joshi8 The guessing part is the most fun. The varied perspectives make the game hilarious. Other than this, I have played a few online quizzies.
Slack & Gmeet.
We build an enterprise grade product in a year(which is being launched tomorrow, ie. Friday 11th 🤞🏼) where right from building team to launch everything was done remotely!
Thursday
@kapilgadhire Fantastic! We are launching a new mixer from Thursday, this coming thursday :)
@rucha_joshi8 nice
My company is fully remote, so we use Pumble to communicate during the work. But, our HR is so great and thoughtful. They practice to organize once per month team bonding, mostly in some restaurant and we have two or three times per year theme parties or large team building so we can bond more with new colleagues and have fun within the team. I also love a once a week virtual coffee hour that's been organized for all newcomers the the first two months of socializing.
Thursday
@dodig_ana Sounds awesome! I am curious about the virtual coffee hour, it planned out with activities or is it organic conversations with the newcomers?
Employees at my company organize monthly e-gaming tournaments, it really helps us stay connected.
@rucha_joshi8 Well not really extravagant games but the ones that most people can easily participate in, like Pictionary, Chess, Ludo, etc.
Thursday
We are using software called "Bravo." It is an employee engagement software; it connects all employees. This software is beneficial in engaging all remote employees of our organization.
Thursday
@elena_cirera Interesting choice. Is this the one that helps you give appreciative feedback to your team mates as well?
Slack , zoom and whatsapp app
Thursday
@alhussaini_consultancies Interesting, and apart from work related communication do you have other meetings / events where you socialise with each other?
My team is fully remote and located all over the us. Once a week we use Gather https://app.gather.town/app for our end of week video meeting. I have found having the meeting around the roof top fire, makes things more relaxed.
Thursday
@daniel_illenberger I have heard of gather town, though have not used it. Do you only have video meetings once a week?
@rucha_joshi8 We get the whole team together only once a week for status updates, and that is really where Gather Town shines. We have many micro meetings all week long as needed. The company is still small and we find this process works well. Besides providing ambiance, games, and cool scooters to drive around, Gather Town has no 45 min limit for more than 2 participants, unlike zoom.
In our company we have a virtual coffee hour almost every other day. It is just a simple google meet or teams meeting so whoever can make it can come in but there is one person who facilitates the "cafe".
Thursday
@adraina_a Oh lovely! and what do you all do during the coffee hour?
@rucha_joshi8 The one who facilitates can have an agenda or we just chitchat about random things. We try and have the facilitator make it engaging.