TOP 7 ways to encourage employees to participate in virtual team events!

When organising virtual team building events, one of the most common queries that seem to pop up amongst some of my clients has been about how to encourage their co workers to participate in the virtual event.

If you are going to spend your valuable time and money on a virtual event for your team, then you want as many people as possible to attend and engage in the event. With virtual events, remote employees have the ability to simply log off at any point if they are not engaged or interested in the event.

Below are some proven tips I have provided to clients to help them entice their co workers to participate in their virtual activities:

1. Unique & Fresh Event

At the beginning of lockdown across the globe, Zoom Quizzes became very popular. But let’s face it, everyone is tired of those quizzes, and suggesting a virtual quiz to your team might not get the most excited reaction from your team (unless they are die-hard trivia fans - well go right ahead with virtual trivia!).

Trying new and unique events should naturally stir interest amongst people, so think outside of the box and try to find something unusual or new that they haven’t done before. This natural curiosity should definitely help in increasing those attendance numbers. Virtual Murder mysteries, virtual coffee breaks with coffee, virtual music bingo, virtual cooking workshops, virtual happy hour, escape rooms, magic shows are just a few examples of unique virtual event ideas that can really pique interest.

2. Competition

Who doesn’t love some friendly competition? By having an event that is a game with a clear winner at the end, you can put different departments up against each other. People generally love bragging rights and by putting team leaders in charge of rounding up their teams then you have a good chance of a high attendance rate - add in a super prize et voila!

The great thing about having the competition element gives the opportunity to turn the event into a regular event and therefore giving employees something to look forward to on a regular basis.

3. Corporate Gift Box

Over the holiday season in December 2020, virtual events replaced the classic holiday work party, so to make them extra special a lot of my clients were super creative in sending their co-workers some nice gifts that coincided with their virtual party.

Some sent cocktail-making kits, free meals via a delivery service of their choice, coffee tasting kits, bottles of wine, etc. If your budget allows, sending a gift to tie in with the event is definitely going to generate interest in the event.

4. Workshops

Virtual workshops tend to be a very popular choice, especially amongst smaller teams. As a virtual team building activity, it is great to choose a fun workshop that participants can follow along with home, ask questions and learn a new skill that they can use time and time again.

Even better if you can find a workshop that also provides the materials for the demonstration. If you want to try a virtual workshop with your team I highly recommend cooking workshops, mixology workshops, and painting workshops as they tend to be the most exciting and easy to run, with so many great options out there to choose from.

5. Rewards

A great way to entice people to attend your virtual team building event is to reward the group for participating. It can be anything from sending gifts, extra time off; one client rewarded participants with a ‘get out of meeting free card’.

What rewards you can offer to participants will of course vary depending on individual organisations, job roles, working hours, budgets.

6. Event Timing

Organizing an event during the working hours, either shortly before or after lunch, more people will join as opposed to if you organize this during their personal time.

7. Informative and easy to follow

Try to make the event invite enticing, informative, and quick to read, this makes joining the event easy for those intending to join, especially if participants need to squeeze it in between calls, the easier it is for them the more likely they are to join the call.

For a lot of companies virtual team building activities are here to stay, so why not try different types of events with your team regularly. It is a good way to reconnect with remote workers with a fun activity that is more engaging than a 30 minutes team meeting.

I hope the above will help you in enticing as many of your co workers as possible to join your virtual team building activities.