The lobby at Googles Sydney office makes visitors feel like theyre about to embark on a safari expedition rather than drown in a concrete jungle. Learn more about virtual costume contests. The second event is a winter wreath demo where again supplies are sent to peoples houses and you can follow along with the demo and put a non-denominational winter wreath together. To begin with, publicly recognizing great employees reflects well on your company for customers, investors, and your team. To make your company memorable in a sea of forgettable mugs. The best online holiday parties encourage interaction. To truly show your employees that they are doing a great job, bring in some fun office traditions like "Taco Tuesday.". Host fun team games to play with your team members. 33 Amazing Employee Appreciation Ideas [2023 Update], The Ultimate Guide To Employee Rewards and Recognition, 50 Best Words of Appreciation for Employees, Gift Cards Make For The Perfect Employee Rewards, Indias Largest Telecom Company Boosts their Global Employee Engagement with Vantage Rewards, 25 Employee Engagement Activities To Reinvent Your Workforce, 25 Employee Recognition Statistics You Shouldn't Ignore, Top 102 Employee Recognition Quotes To Celebrate Their Endeavours, 23 Awesome Ways To Make Every Employee Work Anniversary Memorable, All You Need To Know About Sales Incentive Programs In 2023, 10 Intrinsic Rewards That Your Employees Look Forward To, Empower the Workforce With A Culture of Peer-to-Peer Recognition. In stock now. The effectiveness of office snacks is that major companies like Google use them as a perk to attract the top employees. You can even snap a photo and create your own hashtag for when employees achieve something especially commendable. As a leader, having the right mindset, structure and strategies to enhance communication and build team cohesion will help you ensure the latter is true for you and your team. A client of mine, whose team of 15 people are now all working from home, established daily 30-minute morning team check-ins to stay connected and on top of the priorities of the team, which have shifted given COVID-19. One of the best ideas for spirit care packages is to pack supplementary materials for the weeks activities. Pike13 Spirit Week highlights: The Internet might be intermittent in these spots, so you can also give teammates the option of joining via phone audio instead of mobile video app. Gain practical tools and strategies to lead your remote team to high performance with mycomplimentary webinar and check out my new e-course: Lead High Performing Remote Teams That Thrive Through COVID and Beyond. Having direct access to a mentor gives junior professionals valuable one-on-one training. It all started with a group chat. It offers employees a brief respite from their daily work. If your office normally does Secret Santa or Yankee Swap gift exchanges, you can keep it going this year too. We do a Champagne toast at our holiday party every year, and theres some rumors about mini bottles being shipped out for a Zoom toast, but Im not sure! Take a bubble bath (bonus: Add a glass of. I am going to go out on a limb here to say to you something vital. If the show is a competition, then at the end of the performance have the audience vote for a winner via poll, or send a panel of judges into a breakout room to deliberate. And encouraging a cake culture can never be a bad thing. Food has a way of being a catalyst to bring people together. Elaine is a true partner in every sense of the word and would be a huge asset to any company. The employee experience is better, and the company's outcome stronger. Be sure to grab plenty of screen shots throughout the afternoon or evening. Clear your schedule for at least an hour. Its a way for us to provide food and a gathering without being on-site and in groups. Gather the kids and create Paper Mice, Halloween skull jewelry, and more. Also, they grow more motivated to maintain or improve their good work. Instead of taking the stage, performers share their acts during a video call. Check out our list ofonline escape rooms. Declaring theme days is one of the easiest spirit week ideas for work from home. Ask each person to share one word to describe how they are feeling in. As anyone whos tried to organize any office activity knows, its hard, if not impossible, to find something that everyone will like, so some offices are offering a whole buffet of choices to pick from: My company couldnt find an online activity that worked for 40 people, so theyre offering a few different options. There were two main ways we did this: by requiring team members to be vaccinated, and picking a venue that would reduce people's overall exposure. Simply schedule a Zoom meeting and ask attendees to join from an outdoor spot such as backyards, parks, or beaches. Priorities. With most schools and districts shut down for the foreseeable future, many faculty and teachers are struggling to find ways to connect with their students. Have regular check ins with individual team members. Superhero Academy is a perfect fit for a hero or villain themed online spirit day. You could even hold contests to name and reward the best virtual backgrounds for each meeting. More than a manager, an employee's peers are more likely to know about their good qualities. Heres a way to see people in-person from the safety of your cars: Our company has had a couple of drive-through events set up in the parking lot of the main company campus. Elaine has in-depth knowledge of digital, social, and websites both from a strategic and user . We also had a gift wrapping contest as part of itwe were a creative bunch with lots of backgrounds in the arts, so some gifts were a person making a donation to a charity in the recipients honor, but making a video that fit their interest to share that with them, or a homemade puzzle, or other similar fun announcements. Because honestly, everyone expects the managers and leaders to be bossy and unreachable. Make the day memorable by organizing outside barbecues or small office parties. Sometimes the best thing you can do for your team is to enable them to let off some steam without the pressure to perform. Or, if you hold virtual escape rooms or similar games, then include puzzles. Beyond bestowing traditional awards like extraordinary performance, team player, or rookie of the year, you can also create fun award categories. Namely's powerful HR Software is built for mid-sized companies designed to be used by everyone, every day. Online board games or trivia challenges are a great way to bring a team together for something besides work. Social Media is the biggest influencer of our generation. Appreciation from one's peers has more significance than from one's manager. It's not only a nice little project to focus on, but gives us something to talk about that's not work or coronavirus. Hands-on Experiences: 1. Humans have an inherent need to get appreciated for their work. Plus, we decided there will be a prize for the tallest sunflower, so it's turning into quite the competition. - Rose Jinks, Digital PR Specialist at Online Mortgage Advisor, As a way to boost morale and encourage teamwork while were apart, my company has been hosting virtual trivia nights every week. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration of the federal government (OSHA) has provided detailed guidelinesfor workplace safety policies. One such example that predates COVID-19 (if you follow our newsletter, you already know that it's a personal favorite of mine) is the Be My Eyes app. to Launch During a Pandemic. Few people are as knee-deep in our work-related anxieties and sticky office politics as Alison Green, who has been fielding workplace questions for a decade now on her website Ask a Manager. Often, in the case of. The best online spirit week ideas unite dispersed teammates, encourage interaction, and inspire fun. I'm really hoping we won't have to consider this in future years, but a lot of planning time went into making sure that we minimized our COVID risk during the trip. Whether they worked late to get the job done, blew past their sales goal, or volunteering at a local shelter, give employees the credit they deserve. They had a selection that included non-alcoholic mixes too (like a ginger lemonade). 2023 teambuilding.com, all rights reserved | Terms | Privacy, virtual tours of museums, zoos, and parks, list of free virtual team building activities for work, list of the best remote team outing ideas, Post a picture from your first year at the company vs now, Take a screenshot in the unlikeliest Zoom meeting spot, Film a 30-second work from home snack cooking lesson, Dress-up accessories, like sunglasses, boas, and novelty headbands, Create a collaborative world map showing which countries team members have lived in or traveled to, Ask participants to compile top 5 travel bucket lists of the destinations they would most like to visit, and pair up teammates with similar interests for a video chat, Video chat with screen pals in different countries, Compile a photo slideshow of the teams collective travels, Most likely to forget to mute/unmute the mic, Lightning fingers, aka fastest Slack replies, Most likely to binge cat videos during the workday. Revamp your break room. Also, they give continuous optimal performance. Reading a book on the sofa is a cozy way to get in the Christmas spirit. Who doesnt love free food? This is a great way to begin your team meetings. Coffee or tea tastings work as well: We had a virtual coffee tasting where they sent those who RSVP'd a free AeroPress and. Spirit weeks build ties with community Over the course of this week, schools will ask students and staff to do activities such as share TikTok videos, do workouts and share pictures wearing. Spirit week is a week-long event that promotes company pride and employee engagement through fun activities. It means that they can catch up on the countless movies that they have missed. Once the awards end, you can email digital certificates and e-gift cards to recipients, or mail trophies and paper awards to their houses. Not to mention that birthday parties are an opportunity to appreciate peers. Although workplace benefits help keep employees happy, they rarely tend to spark inspiration. Donut is an app in our Slack channel that randomly pairs up coworkers together, encouraging them to set up a coffee meeting (of course, in this case, a virtual coffee meeting) in order to get to know each other better. Harvard Business Review reports that "the most impactful driver of employee engagement is recognition.". The essence of spirit week is enthusiasm, not physical proximity. Recommended Article: Top 102 Employee Recognition Quotes To Celebrate Their Endeavours. To keep our employees motivated, we are encouraging and hosting virtual social time. For instance, take their opinion during decisions like on-boarding new technology or a specific project. That can be too intimidating for your employees. Click here to find out how. And of course folks could also just log off if they wanted to, with no pressure to spend the rest of the day working. Inject Fun and Humor. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. There's a lot you can do to be helpful from home. Its a really cool way to connect with your coworkers and find out more about their life outside of work. Halloween is the time of year when employees can showcase their creativity and interact with coworkers they may not normally work closely with. For the main event, meet up on a video call to sip tea, chat, and play games.