Tips - A virtual team event with real food
After experiencing virtual meetings in the last 12 months (or longer), now we are ready to move our virtual meeting experience to the next level. The reality is, this virtual world is not going to end soon. How we communicate and collaborate globally has totally changed and integrated with local business and services.
During lockdown we are now mostly working from home, leaders and managers still need to communicate with their people and arrange team events just like the "old days". How do they do it virtually now? There are so many creative hybrid ways for mixing virtual events and local services together for an engaging experience. Here is an easy example shared by one of our workshop participants about how he created a virtual team building event experience with real local food delivered to their doorsteps.
"I attended your workshop last month and I really like the practice and discussion sessions. I wanted to inspire my team members to be creative, to try something new and here's my "homework". We made it happen together!"
The communication
Communication is the key. The purpose of this team building event was to increase collaboration, encourage creativity, and connect remote teams after working from home for so many months. A communication email was sent out with the event purpose, agenda, activity instruction, and each team member received an Uber gift card code, so that they were able to arrange food delivery in advance.
The fun part
The team building activity actually began before the virtual event. The challenge was fun - each team member would order food of their own culture for a randomly assigned team member, which means they needed to understand that team member's preferences, dietary needs, restaurants around his/her location, etc. for them to place order online for the day at specific time.
On the day
The team was so excited about the food and kept sharing the food delivery update on the group chat.
And... here's LUNCH TIME! It's a surprise for each team member as they did not know what food they would receive. Lots of pictures shared on the group chat *yum* :d
If your virtual conference platform supports music sharing function and you are looking for some chill-out cafe music for your lunch break, try this.
Wow a taste of different culture! Very well done! Thank you for sharing. I love the idea of ordering food for other team member, to help them build relationships and to understand more about their own backgrounds. It's not really about food, it's more about connecting to each other from a personal level to a working relationship.
We hope this will give others some inspirations for their next virtual events. Be creative and have fun in year 2021.