Remote work gives your company a more diverse workforce, but it can be difficult to build relationships when team members are located around the country. Here are some tips for planning a successful virtual happy hour and five ideas that your team might enjoy. Make sure to keep distractions low by using a virtual office background so everyone can concentrate on the games and fun.
Preparing Games To Play
A successful happy hour needs an engaging host to help keep the party going. It also needs an interesting format. Finally, it needs participants. These things don’t come together on a whim. Now, what is a happy hour? Happy hour atlanta is a great way to experience the city’s dynamic environment and diverse food scene, which come together to create a lovely blend of flavours and friendship.
The host, whether that’s the event planner or another team member, needs time to prepare. Whatever games or fun ideas you have should be thought out and pre-planned so the time flows smoothly. Give the host time to plan. If you are a bunch of adults, you can even enjoy games for adults while drinking.
Giving Away Prizes
Office swag is nice when you’re in person and don’t have to mail it to virtual team members. It can be more difficult planning prizes for a virtual happy hour, but with a little creativity, you can come up with some neat prizes that everyone will enjoy. Online gift certificates for Amazon or Target are sure to please. Streaming gift certificates are another popular idea that can be emailed. If you can get management to sign off, a gift of PTO is another nice option. Even just two hours for an early Friday would be appreciated.
Games And Activities
Although you might want to plan some icebreakers for teams that don’t get together often, it might be better just to jump into the activities. Ask everyone to use an office background to focus on the game.
- Virtual scavenger hunt – ask team members to find a series of objects. Make it a little more personal by selecting objects with personal connections. Instead of just asking them to grab their dictionary, ask them to choose their favorite or most-used reference book, or you could ask them to grab their favorite coffee mug.
- Trivia – there is any number of ways you could go here, by using a list of curated questions around a theme or creating your own list of questions. You could even ask questions about the company or some of the personal things people mention on the Slack platform.
- Host a virtual mystery – there is a wide variety of online mystery games that are great to play with adults. Most last about 90 minutes and ask the participants to solve clues or puzzles to figure out who had done it.
- Truth or Fiction – ask participants to tell four far-fetched things about themselves. Three are true and one is fiction. The other participants try to guess which one isn’t true.
- Guess the song – play the opening beats of a song to see who can get it first. Have a range of songs from different genres and eras to give everyone a chance to shine.
Create special Zoom office backgrounds for your happy hour to remind everyone that this is a fun time.
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