People who work from home can struggle to connect with their colleagues as much as people who go to the office every day. This can create not only a physical distance between employees who work together in remote teams, but also a mental distance. As the remote manager, you want to prevent this from happening. There are a lot of virtual office party ideas, during which employees can get to know each other better and become a close team. Here are some ways to celebrate birthdays, weekends, or even small achievements virtually with the team!
Make everyone's birthday a special one
Especially for people with work-from-home jobs, it might feel lonely when they are working on their birthdays. People normally celebrate their birthdays in the office by bringing a cake. Everyone gets together to sing a birthday song. With the distance between the employees in remote teams, it’s harder to get together on birthdays and make someone feel a little bit more special than usual.
But, luckily there are virtual office party ideas to celebrate everyone’s birthday in the virtual office. You can organize a virtual party through video call to get together on birthdays. This way the birthday celebrator has a joyful day at work even though they are working from home. Also, all employees get to congratulate and celebrate together this way.
Make it even more special by sending a gift! Send a bouquet of flowers, a box of chocolates, or a bottle of champagne for example. During the video call they can unbox the gifts and share with everyone what they got.
Introduce a happy hour for the weekend
Getting to work on Fridays means the week is almost finished, and it’s time for the weekend! So make some free time with the remote team to celebrate the weekend. On Fridays, companies mostly make time for happy hours. This way, employees can have a drink, celebrate the weekend, and connect with each other.
Remote teams can also celebrate the weekend virtually! One of our Teemyco party ideas for adults is to invite everyone for a video meeting and send small packages with a beer, wine, soft drink, and a snack to everyone’s address. If your remote team consists of too many people for one virtual call, you can try creating party rooms. Employees then get together in smaller groups with different people every time. This way, everyone gets the chance to chat with each other.
Do you need a virtual office party idea to make the happy hour extra special? Think about organizing a virtual party where the team will have a cocktail workshop! Send everyone the ingredients for the cocktail and follow a tutorial together or hire a professional cocktail shaker. By making time to celebrate the weekend and have a drink together, the atmosphere of the virtual office can loosen up!
Celebrate even small achievements
Employees need some recognition for their work. After long weeks, months, or even years of putting much effort into their jobs, people need to be reminded what they are doing it for. Since remote employees work from home, you may forget to celebrate achievements. Maybe even forget to give them the recognition for their work they deserve.
An idea to celebrate small achievements is to schedule a weekly meeting on everyone’s agenda. For example, every Wednesday. Then you have a virtual celebration every week in the middle of the week. With this meeting, everyone gets the chance in an accessible way to say what they’re thankful for, and you can get a heads up on how things are going. You can even put an employee in the spotlight for delivering good work, celebrating last week’s hard work, or even a personal matter.
You can choose a short meeting. Then just one person at a time expresses what they’re thankful for. You can also have a more extended meeting during which the whole team expresses themselves.
Organize virtual workshops
You can organize virtual workshops for the team to celebrate the company's anniversary or any other achievement. Ideas for virtual office parties for adults include a cooking workshop, a yoga class, a virtual hackathon, or even a music workshop. This keeps the work environment fun, and the employees connect with each other!
