Virtual Employee Engagement Activities

Turbulent times, a lot of changes in the past few months, amidst the chaos, I started a journey, a journey to be an HR, while I was single-handled told what my responsibilities would be, which time and again would only be clear by some communication gap, but it did make sense after a certain sometime. 

The journey has been 5 months short, I'm still going strong, would call it short because that's how it's perceived in the industry, that's made to make us feel like machines, not complaining about my job, I've had a journey and I've been moving along on the ride.

Now, in this journey, I've had the main challenge that was cumbersome to me but after reading and interacting with a couple of professionals it happened to be a subject of worrying for quite a lot of them. How do we keep our employees engaged, has been a challenge for every HR folks for quite some time since most of them have started working from home, and with the possibility of working from home, the whole shift in having all our activities being virtual has been a major challenge for some of us.

I would list down a direct reference to some of the activities I've personally undertaken at the organization I'm currently working with.

1. Farewells 

Employee's/Intern's farewell, I work for a start-up and we have a couple of Interns that work with us, so all-in-all we've had farewells happen. The tradition followed in our organization mainly goes likes this - we take our turns to speak about the individual, it's in a sequence one after the other. In this one instance, we had the intern's last day, he made a funny video, depicting each of us, related to movie characters/songs. 

2. 'Ghost'

It's a simple game, with simple characteristics, there are multiple renditions to the same game, you can play it with odd numbers, even numbers, multiples of 3,4,5, and so on.

One such rendition that we played included skipping the vowels in the word, and also we played a rule where the individual was given three chances, this not only leads to more interest but gave in some more game time for every teammate.

Link - https://youtu.be/pJjKvr2mxcY

3. Birthdays

The best and the most nascent step to keep employees engaged, as HR's with less complex systems in the organization or be it working for a start-up it leads to fewer complexities, focus on these aspects where you can make the most of it by including birthdays in your engagement activities.

One trick that I used which could be useful for you to, would be - since, it was the day of an engagement activity for us (the system that we follow is every alternate Friday we have an engagement activity that takes place) we celebrated the employees birthday by doing the obvious that is the cake ceremony along with it, we had Navy Blue t-shirts on, because that was/is the favorite color of our employee, one way to make them feel included.

To go along with the theme, I make creatives. The main focus for each creative is to be as minimal as possible and leave minor Easter eggs.

4. Pictionary



Simple, easy, and engrossing. Whether you use Google Meet, Zoom, or any other virtual medium. I preferably use Google Meet, which gives me an option of a Whiteboard, this option can be used as a medium you prefer. While we played Pictionary, the plan-of-action for me looked like this - I already shortlisted a few movies, phrases, and songs that were easy to depict. I made the list, divided the team in two, and tracked the points. The winning team got nothing but motivation.

5. Theme specific 

While this may not be a go-to for engagement activity. A lot of activities that happen can be surrounded by a theme. For ex- Valentine's day, Mental Health month, Pride month, Women's Day. On the occasion of Valentine's day, I made an e-gift card, added it with personalized messages, and send them across to each teammate individually. There's a thin line when performing a task like this, the lines, words used were as professional as possible.

I've yet to explore Pride month and the conversation surrounding it, for Mental Health month - I did nothing out of the ordinary, but we had a precise conversation this specifically considering the month of May. The start-up that I work for, the employers, managers are advocates of Mental Health, the conversation wasn't specific for May, we make sure we have regular conversations surrounding the mental health of the employees.

On Women's Day, we had a personalized message from each teammate and we put that up on a poster and the same was broadcasted on an e-mail to each teammate.

6. Open Mic Night

My most successful activity yet, the team that I work with have been immensely supportive. While any activity takes place, it must be with the participation, if there is no participation how can an activity be successful. 'Open Mic Night', the easiest activity to have some joy around. The team I worked with is a talented bunch, to quote them, one is a rapper, two writers, and a few closeted performers. We had rapping, poetry session, singing, and hosting happening. Open Mic Night is a must-have on your list of activities.

7. Two Truths and a Lie

Simple, effective, and fun. There are layers on how this can be put to use.

i. You can use it as a medium for introducing a new teammate

ii. You can make an intense game out of it with your team members

8. Guess the Character and the Movie

I worked around creating a presentation with Movie references, here's how it worked - each reference indicated a famous costume from the movie, they were put in a presentation that I worked on Canva and the team was asked to guess which movie it is.

Here's the link to the costume reference - https://in.pinterest.com/pin/321092648441018589/

9. Quiz

A personal favorite since I was an adolescent I've been fascinated with quizzes. I prepared a few quizzes in fashion for my teammates, the quiz surrounded brand logos, general knowledge. The team had a good time being competitive and had amazing joy, being competitive with each other.

A platform, that I was introduced to from an organization that I worked briefly with, Mentimeter.com, you can prepare a fun interactive quiz for free with its limitations, you can register up to 2000 participants and have a jolly good time with your teammates.

10. 'Good Old Days'

This idea was simply implemented for the team to feel relaxed amidst a pandemic, it was an easy execution, this is how I executed it, I worked around sending out an e-mail two weeks before the date I planned to have the activity, the teammates sent their image of themselves from when they were a kid one after the other. I compiled them and had a presentation prepared for them to guess who it was, it was simple, fun and we got to have a glimpse of they looked like a kid, even the founders of the organization were a part of it.

My attempt to have this blog is to ease out the ever-going question related to 'Virtual Engagement Activities', I hope this helps.

The tool I use for creatives, presentations is Canva.com, in case of any questions - you can directly reach out - kevinraju29@gmail.com