Feeling connected and engaged at work is essential for fueling productivity. Unfortunately, the remote workplace can quickly become stale, boring, and even lonely at times. However, as a remote manager, there are some things that you can do to liven up your remote workplace and ensure that everyone is communicating and having fun.

Why Do We Need Social Interaction at Work?

You may think that people should just be getting on with their jobs and ticking off their to-do lists, not socializing. However, there are plenty of reasons that it’s a good idea to encourage social interaction in the workplace. Research points towards the idea that social interaction can lower stress levels, which is especially important in a remote work environment.

It is your remote workplace culture that can either contribute towards positive well-being or have a negative effect on your employees’ mental health. Some particular aspects that you should focus on including in your culture are meaningful relationships, feeling of belonging, and support. These, along with a sense of cooperation and caring for each other, can drastically improve peoples’ mood, raising productivity at the same time.

10 Ideas to Create a Fun Remote Workplace

Random Acts of Kindness

When was the last time that you did something nice for a colleague out of the blue? It’s always exciting when someone goes out of their way to think about you, so why not start a challenge for people to complete random acts of kindness. This could be anything from emailing through a voucher for a colleague to buy themselves a cup of coffee to sending a cute cat video to your co-worker. These acts don’t have to be expensive or time-consuming. Sometimes the simplest things can mean the most.

Celebrate Special Events

With large workplaces, there is always an event coming up. Someone’s birthday, work anniversary, or something else. Why not make a tradition out of these events? Just as people may bring cake into the office, you could encourage everyone to grab a cupcake/muffin/scone when it’s someone’s birthday and have a virtual morning tea together. This will be meaningful for the person whose birthday it is and fun for everyone else.

Informal Catchups

Just as everyone would congregate in the kitchen at lunchtime for a chat, you can facilitate similar interactions in a remote work environment. You could arrange a daily or weekly ‘lunch’ video conference where whoever wants to can log on and catch up without talking about work. This allows people to get to know each other and stay connected, not just talk about work all the time.

Do a Quiz

One team-building activity that everyone loves is a good, old-fashioned quiz. Run in the style of a classic pub quiz, get everyone in teams of up to six people and ready to go answering as many questions correctly as they can. This fosters a bit of team spirit and a healthy level of competition amongst the different teams in your remote workplace. Teams can start private online group chats to discuss answers and get to know each other.

Have an Ongoing Contest

When we say contest, we don’t mean a real one. You could have an ongoing competition for a number of things; messiest desk, best lunch, most impressive working from home set up. The idea is that you get photos of different peoples’ workspaces and it creates discussions about who wins each contest. This fosters casual conversations, and people can have fun coming up with new ideas of how to win the contests.

Create a Playlist

Most people enjoy listening to music, whether it’s while they work, when they go for a run, or while they are driving. Why not create an office playlist? You can start a playlist on Spotify that the rest of your team can add songs to. This is a great way to make people feel as though they have some commonality despite being in entirely different locations. People put the playlist on while they are working and might get a fun surprise – we image the group chat would light up if someone added ‘Toxic’ by Britney Spears, for example.

Start A Good News Chat

Frequently at work and especially in meetings, we can get caught up in sharing challenges and issues that we have going on. This is good, as it allows others to help us problem solve. However, to have a bit of fun, why not start a ‘good news’ chat? This will be a group chat with your team that’s for positive news only. People can comment anything from winning over a new client to adding photos of their cat.

Keep Casual Fridays Going

In a remote workplace, every day is probably causal Friday for your staff. But you can turn this into another opportunity to have fun with your team. Arrange virtual after-work drinks on a Friday, and everyone can kick back and relax, knowing the weekend is right ahead of them. This is a great chance to socialize and lighten up the working atmosphere.

Where in the World is…?

Much like the famous ‘Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?’, you can play a similar game with your remote team. This is an especially fun game if you have staff in other countries or states as a part of your remote workplace. Each person shares photos and facts about their country or city. This can give people the chance to learn more about each person on the team.

Pet Chat

Most people love pets. No matter whether you’re a dog person or a cat person, you probably love seeing photos of cute animals. So, why not start a pet chat or group? Just like you develop an organizational chart, you can create a place where people put images of their pets. This allows people to see more about each other’s lives, through photos of their most loved companions.

A remote workplace doesn’t have to be boring just because you’re working from your own home. By trying out some of the above tips with your team, you can turn your dull work environment into a vibrant, fun place to be.