Team building through gamification

Resources Team building through gamification

Team building has something of a chequered history when it comes to office practices, and will create different associations in people’s minds depending on their experiences. They can vary from the most awkward, forced, and uncomfortable group interactions imaginable, involving post-it notes, “trust falls,” and even team juice cleanses, to fun corporate getaways with kayaks and quad bikes, and treasure hunts, or other interactive, gamified activities that sincerely foster teamwork through shared experiences.

Whether you have a team of introverts or a team of extroverts, and regardless of the balance and general appetite for such activities, from an employer and management perspective, team building is essential. You want all your people pulling when they’re meant to pull, pushing when they’re meant to push, and watching out for each other to contribute to an inclusive and supportive culture.

Team building in a world of hybrid and remote working patterns

Creating team cohesion and fostering that desired culture can be challenging at the best of times, but can turn into a bit of a headache when colleagues are working from home, or teams are divided among various offices.

This is where gamification, or more specifically, an internal corporate gamification strategy, can pay serious dividends. The term gamification means applying game mechanics, typically from video games, to typically less fun tasks or processes to improve performance. It can be applied anywhere where user engagement could be lacking. From an internal corporate perspective, it could be used to improve employee engagement through gamified training, to develop soft skills that could help prepare some individuals for leadership roles, or, specifically for our purposes, to help build bonds within and across teams.

Gamification works because it appeals not only to our innate desire for competition, but also to our need for social interaction and discovery. By taking what makes games fun, the individual mechanics that encourage, for example, an amateur sports team to work together and give their best to beat another amateur sports team, you can massively level up your corporate team building efforts – and because gamification takes to form of online games, they can work for employees working in the office, onsite, hybrid, or working remotely.

Team-Building for telecommuting or working remotely

Remote working or telecommuting offers flexibility and better time management for employees, as well as savings and efficiencies for employers, but what about the emotional connection that employees can form over chats at the coffee machine? Employees who don’t have strong relationships within a company can feel undervalued. This can decrease productivity, and make effective collaborative work between employees more challenging to facilitate.

According to the Harvard Business Review, “Close friendships at work increase employee satisfaction by 50%.” It also goes on to state that “people with a very close friend at work are 7 times more likely to fully engage in their work.” So, what does that mean in terms of working remotely? It means virtual team building is an essential element of the modern work landscape.

Participer à un Team Building virtuel avec ses collègues

What is online Team Building?

Gamified virtual team building takes the form of an activity, an exercise, or a challenge, created with the specific purpose of helping employees learn to work together more effectively, and to get to know each other better. This team building activity takes place online so that people in different offices or working from home can participate no matter where they are in the world.

Organising remote team building exercises offers numerous advantages for the company and its employees:

By using a games creation platform like Drimify, you are able to create experiences that can bring together anywhere from 3, to 50, or even 1,000 coworkers in an immersive and original gaming concept. Each participant, from the comfort of their own home, using a computer, tablet, or smartphone, can participate in an engaging experience with all of their colleagues. Through a fun, tailor made gaming experience which can easily be adapted to your goals, you can build a sense of team spirit and cohesion among your employees, whether you have a single office, or teams in various countries all over the world.

Team Building à distance pour collaborer avec ses collègues

Create momentum and better team spirit for remote employees

Online team building is a method of bringing remote teams together to create an enjoyable work environment which fosters productivity and employee satisfaction. Physical distance can quickly become emotional distance, so it is important to create a positive workplace culture that colleagues can feel a part of. The John Donne poem “No Man is an Island” rings true – very few employees will thrive if left as hermits, and they will feel forgotten about, or even abandoned.

Remote team building is made up of various strategies, games and activities that aim to create more human interactions and connections on a daily basis. Digitising your team building activities will facilitate improved team cohesion no matter how far apart employees are, and can be used to create a collective sense of healthy competition to boost motivation. Creating a fun atmosphere impacts directly upon the work environment and group dynamic.

Virtual Team-Building solutions

The possibilities are infinite and creativity is the only limit. Here is a selection of concepts to serve as jumping off points for your own gamified team building projects, to give you an idea of what can be achieved by customising the tried and tested game engines available on the Drimify catalogue.

One-off Online Team Building

If you have never organised team building with your teams before, starting with a one-off event can be a good approach. This test run will allow you to try out the concept and gather feedback about the experience.

You can easily create a Quiz, a mini game, or other fun activity from the Drimify catalogue in a matter of minutes, with a personalised design based on your company’s graphics and imagery. Then, share this content with your employees via email, text, or internal social media. Depending on how your employees take to the experience, you can look at the metrics and data on your Drimify dashboard to make improvements and adjustments. You could even include a customised Survey to get a more explicit idea of what people thought, and even ask for suggestions about what they might find valuable in team building activities.

31-day Challenge

Have you thought about a regular challenge to unite your teams? The 31-day challenge (or whatever duration you choose), allows you to extend regular team challenges to boost team spirit. It can become a regular activity that your employees will look forward to as an enjoyable opportunity for teamwork and light-hearted fun.

By using the Dynamic Path™ platform, you can create a game with a storyline and a new fun activity each day, each week, or each month. You can use it to kickstart the morning, or at any other time of the day to offer your teams some variety and interaction.

Drimify’s Dynamic Path™ format lets you arrange the release of new games or modules for a specific date and time in advance, and link that with an email or text announcement to notify participants.

The leaderboard function allows you to build some healthy and fun competition within the team, and even reward the top-ranking employees at the end.

Online Team Building and training

A team building activity is also a chance to train colleagues on a topic that is important or relevant to the company, or to a department’s specific function. By using a series of collaborative games or a Dynamic Path™, you can create a compelling experience that will deliver a more engaging, and more labour and cost efficient training experience than traditional corporate training. Gamification in this form is referred to as serious games, because they are games with a serious purpose, rather than being purely for entertainment.

Making corporate learning fun does not stop participants from staying focused on the topics, nor the company from reaping the benefits of gamification to deliver the required messaging. If anything, turning education or training into a game can make the process far more effective, as intelligently and thoughtfully designed gamification experiences encourage greater user engagement from learners.

Create digital after work events

The after work events concept is one of the most popular among colleagues to share and discuss subjects other than work. In a more relaxed and less stressful environment, it is easier to develop relationships between groups of colleagues, and also allows those that they rarely interact during work time to build bonds. Why not offer a challenge or game to make the event even more fun?

Applying games such as digital treasure hunts to physical locations, the different modules of which could be scanned and accessed through QR codes, encourages teamwork and competition, and encourages people to interact and let their guards down. It’s essentially a really effective ice breaker, and a very natural one at that. Think about children on their first days of school – they interact through play, and that’s generally how they build the bonds that will carry them through each chapter of their education.

How do you create a digital Team Building activity?

With Drimify, you can work completely independently, and use the platform in self service mode, or if you don’t have the time, nor want the hassle, we have support solutions to help you as much or as little as you need.

We can help you to devise a strategy as well as the full storyboard, then:

To find out more, check out our detailed support services or contact us to make the most of our advice and expertise.

Photo credit: Daria Nepriakhina, Annie Spratt on Unsplash

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