Favorite hacks for building team spirit in a remote company? We are DRAGGING. I have tried some meetings for hanging out, but I feel like it might just take up people's time and not sure it really does much.

Our workplace team has done some really great stuff to help with this. I have never met any of my direct colleagues face to face (started with the company a year ago) and I still feel close and connected to them and the rest of the company:
- Care packages with company merch and treats (like food and drinks)
- Quarterly all-hands with great transparency on what's going on with the company
- Activities like remote games evenings and remote cooking classes (optional obviously)
- Slack channels for things like 'coffee-talk' and 'fur-kids' etc
- Weekly 1:1s (with structure) with leadership - important that these are not cancelled
- DNS (do not schedule) time during an afternoon one day of the week for catch-up/focus time
- Half-day Friday's for a month (not every month but usually one in summer and one in winter)
I think importantly though none of this is going to work if everyone feels burnt out with workload so I feel it's important that the balance there is right - nobody is going to take any time to build team connections and spirit if all they cna think about during that time is 'oh my god how am I going to catch-up with the work I'm not doing right now'

You may want to experiment with some combination of multiple things.

The morale of individuals:
1:1 meetings between Managers and 'direct reports' (harder to define if you have more of a flat or less hierarchical team structure) can be beneficial for helping to make sure an individual team member has the time and space to discuss personal goals, challenges, any kind of 'housekeeping' issues around logistics, etc. Doing those meetings weekly or bi-weekly can often help to make sure their morale isn't being weighed down by purely personal considerations.

Set a quarterly goals planning meeting with individuals, connect this somehow to any performance framework that might be in use at your workplace.

The morale of the team:
A monthly 'all hands' social video call, with our without an agenda can sometimes be a good way to lift spirits or blow off steam. Depending on the nature of your team, you can leave it totally unstructured, or if people prefer more of an agenda you can consider things like the first 30 min is a specific topic that someone speaks to, or every person/'team' gives a 10 min update on what they are actively working on and then leave some portion of time for free form discussion. Sometimes just getting together and seeing everyone on video can do a lot, especially in larger teams where you may not get day-to-day interaction with other people you like now that you are remote.

Another thing to try is to set some 'deep dive' meetings as a planning mechanism and leave buffer time for drifting the conversation into a less formal group chat. An example might be, if you are set to build some new feature around something like setting a date range on a search - everyone shows up with ideas and examples, then read the room, and if people seem relaxed and would like to just chat about random stuff, allow the meeting to drift "off-topic" and don't worry about it not being 'productive' or 'wasting time' for anyone. If on the other hand, people seem 'all business', roll with that as well and acknowledge the progress on the topic and wrap it up without the chit chat.

People at on-site workplaces waste a ton of time just drifting around the space and chatting and we don't get in a bind about that because it's "normalized". People can also waste a lot of time when they are frustrated about things at work, even when we aren't in meetings. Improving morale deserves and requires time, it's not optional. Figure out the types of activities that fit your culture, be agile, experiment, and hopefully, it will steadily improve team spirit.

Get folks together in person a couple times a year. Doesn’t even have to be the whole team each time. If a few are working on a project together, schedule a 1 or 2 day meeting. Find a local brewery and head there after work. Online won’t build chemistry in my experience.

Some of the things we have done for our team to show appreciate and build team spirit:

-we have a special channel on slack for daily questions. Like “share a photo of your weekend?” “What’s your favorite type of ice cream?”
-Monthly Snack Time - a 30 minute optional hangout on a no-meetings Wednesday. It’s just a fun space to bring a snack, take a break, and catch up
-Surprise day off - People appreciate this very much when you tell them “you have Friday off” at the beginning of the week!
-surprise packages with some company merch and favorite snacks


We have moved away from doing long zoom events because people don’t want to be on another meeting.

You could try a Recharge Day.

I have seen it done different ways.

The latest version that I attended was a 4 hour virtual event. It was optional to attend. And only 2 hours were in zoom. The other 2 hours was for us to go do something … take a walk, read a book, write a letter, do something that would be relaxing.

The 2 hours of zoom time were games. We played some mini games in a large group of 40 people. Then we went into breakout rooms and played drawing games.

My favorite mini game was with slack emoticons. My second favorite was a drawing game.

There are games aka trivia that you can incorporate into online meetings. People get on video and go to a website (you can populate the questions) and have a little contest. My manager last year did this with trivia from each one of us...you had to guess whom the situation/thing/ etc was. We enjoyed that... and it was fun.

Try some more structured team building activities where people are a bit more forced to interact? So we usually have a different team member host each time and play a range of games (host chooses) including jackpot games or you can find online simulators for werewolf (aka mafia) or trivia.

Also, make sure that it’s during regularly scheduled work hours. We do every other Friday towards the end of the day. If I have to join during my own time, my morale drops significantly.

Share wins. Also in your 1 on 1’s find out what their goals are so they can alight their daily duties with their path to said goals.

Why not just leave them alone? Making them do useless things is going to lower team morale even more. Don’t understand why managers keep wanting to force this. Give us time away from our coworkers and they’ll work better together. Forcing them to spend more time together will lower team spirit more

Pay for everyone to flight out and be together. Something simple like a Tuesday through Thursday. Do it twice a year. Half of it can be actual work, but no more than half. The other part should be social. I am full remote and my company keeps delaying getting us together. No one knows anything about each other. No one wants to go the extra mile for their coworker. We don’t have deep relationships. If you are ok with a fine to good team, don’t meet up in person. If you want a great team, I have seen that building personal connections is key. And I haven’t seen a successful way to do that over a zoom call…

We use "tacos" in slack. Everyone has 5 tacos they can give out for appreciation to a teammate in a day. And then at the end of the month we award a gift card (for coffee) to who got the most tacos and who gave the most tacos. It really helped our large team to grow closer as they were looking for opportunities to say nice things about teammates and always had an opportunity to participate without the push for "mandatory" things, which mandatory things are usually a non-starter for team building.

Give Jackbox games a spin. $15-$20 but can really boost morale and allow you to further understand your team and their humor

Send out a gift card that each team member has to share with one another in pairs made up. Rotate persons in pairs and do it every two months .The gift card can be as small as 20$ but the game makes it up for rest. Each member will have to think of the person they gift . Do this for couple of months .

I worked in a remote team for a year. Some activities you could do are watch movies/series together, have people vote maybe and watch them through an extension in their browser that synchronises the show in all devices. Another is games together, like among us which seems stupid but its fun as the team constantly changes or drawing games. It really helped us build a relationship across seniority and nations. Other games might be remote pictionary. Anyway you get the gist, activities where people engage with it together in a fun and light way, where they have opportunities to bond and joke with each other.

Top golf! Always a favorite team outing for us

If people are "dragging" I can pretty much guarantee it isn't because they need you to organize events that will build "team spirit". Find out what the actual morale issues are and address them. They are almost certainly more substantive than not hanging out with coworkers enough.

My team has a weekly social meeting. Anyone who is free and wants to connect with people more can come and there’s no pressure for those who are busy to join. It’s been great for bonding.

Try planning for a hackathon

Our team does daily fun activities of guess a movie by emojis, sports trivia, things like that via slack, just to take 15 mins out of the day and have some fun. It’s small, but it does help!