Remote work might keep teams physically apart, but they don’t have to feel disconnected. Well, not if they use our list of conference teambuilding exercises.

Putting a creative and engaging spin on your conference calls is the perfect way of bringing attendees together.

Listed below are 22 of the best activities for conference calls. Let’s get into it!

Why are teambuilding activities important in conference calls?

Hybrid and remote teams face new challenges. The distance between them can sometimes create a feeling of disconnection which impacts morale. Team-building activities for conference calls help bring them together in meaningful ways, letting them naturally build trust in a positive environment.

Combating long-distance work challenges is critical to having teams with strong bonds that work in harmony. Use exercises in the opening 10 to 15 minutes of a conference call and watch your teams come together in new, positive ways.

22 of the best team-building activities for conference calls

Our conference call activities keep morale high, no matter where everyone is logging in from. Here’s our list, broken down into categories for your teams:

Activities for breaking the ice

These activities are great for cracking an icy atmosphere and are especially useful for newbies in the company.

1. Pet check

“A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.” We always loved this quote that sums up our love for pets. Kickstart an icebreaker session dedicated to showing off your pets to the whole group. Take digital snapshots during the conference and create a digital board where everyone can idolize their pets for the group to see. 

People love showing off their pets, and they can serve as instigators to icebreaker questions, like “How old is your (pet)” and “What breed is he/she?” This starts the wheels into motion so people can get to know each other better. No pets? No problem! Have people showcase a plant they give some T-L-C to for smiles all around!

2. Show us the view from your window!

Have everyone provide a sneak peek of their window view for a few minutes at the start of your conference call. Showing off a piece of your environment can encourage people to ask curious questions about their colleagues’ location. If your conference call is spread out internationally, this could be the perfect activity to bring into your remote or hybrid event. Each person offers a small slice of their everyday life, so this can double up as a check-in activity where people have a window of opportunity to bond over different perspectives (literally!).

3. Past, present, and future

Sometimes people just need a little encouragement to open up and break the ice with colleagues. Provide the framework with this quick teambuilding activity. A little bit of introspection can go a long way in helping people open up, especially introverts! Just have your teams think of three answers to their past, present, and future situations. A past statement could be about their biggest work-achievement. The present could be on a current hobby they’re enjoying, and a final future statement might help them illustrate their long-term dreams. Get into the positive power of reflections for icebreaking!

4. Clip of the day

Lights, camera, connection! Sometimes words just don’t cut it in an ice-breaking conference call, so why not let each person share a hilarious video clip at the start of the meeting? Let attendees share anything, from hilarious memes to a moment that inspired them from their own lives. It might be a short video of busy traffic flowing by as they sit with their laptop in tranquility.

Keep the video length short (like 30 seconds to a minute) and even consider adding some themes to the videos. “Something that made me laugh this week” or “A video to sum up my mood” can set the stage. It adds a personal touch to a light-hearted conference icebreaker, helping people loosen up and bond over videos. Good vibes all round!

5. Hype up your hometown

Our last icebreaker for conferences might be a real kicker for starting conversations among new employees. Everyone loves sharing a little bit about their hometown, so make a moment where people can explain why they are their hometown’s biggest fan! Get them to imagine they were a tour guide, trying to sell a holiday package for a visit to their hometown. Local food, lesser-known trivia, and traditions can all paint a bright picture of their home. You can ask teams at the end whose holiday pitch was the most convincing for a bit of added fun!

Brain teasers and problem-solving activities

These teambuilding activities for work focus on puzzling the mind and make everyone reach for their thinking caps (with minimal stress!)

6. Culture clash quiz

Leading on from the hometown shoutout activity, do a little deep dive into where each attendee is from and create a quiz that gets everyone curious about each others’ cultures. You can ask each person to help you craft trivia questions that highlight something unique from their culture. Create a quiz on a user-friendly platform like Kahoot, or just share them on the call to get up and running. This one works great for celebrating diverse teams made up of international attendees. Think about:

• Unique holidays and celebrations
• Sayings and proverbs (like what does it mean in X culture to have “butterflies in the stomach”?)
• Surprising or strange laws
• National animals and symbols
  
  

7. Riddle me this, riddle me that

Problem-solving can be extra fun by creating workplace riddles that get your attendees scratching their heads for a moment. Challenge their wits with a well-thought-out list of riddles to open up or close the conference with amusement. Try out some of these for examples:

• I can be cracked, made, told and played. What am I? (Solution: a joke!)
• I’m tall when I’m young, and I’m short when I’m old. What am I? (Solution: a candle, which shortens over time!)

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Riddles are a light-hearted way to bring people together (as well as to get the occasional moan). They challenge people to think outside the box, so try these out to leave your teams feeling riddle-culously accomplished!

8. Appearing objects

Now you see it, now you don’t! A quickfire game of “Appearing objects” can inject a bit of playful fun into your conference full of virtual attendees. It’s a no-materials game and the premise is very simple. The host of the conference chooses one person, who is the “hider.” Everyone gets 15 seconds to carefully stare at everything on show in their colleagues’ webcams. Then everyone turns off their cams for 5 seconds, and your “hider” adds or removes an object. It’s up to everyone else to guess what has been added, and by who. Hey, where’d that box of apple Danishes miraculously appear from? 

9. “Who’s behind the photo album?”

Here’s a teambuilding activity that promotes a sense of nostalgia and has people guessing. Before your conference call, ask each person to submit a mystery photo or two from their past. Don’t worry if it contains fashion failures or embarrassingly-gappy smiles, the funnier the better. Just make sure it’s hard to guess who the photo belongs to. Share each photo one at a time and have people guess who it belongs to. Get the person who submitted it to share a little bit about the backstory of the photo. Did they really cut their hair using a kitchen bowl?

Imaginative activities for creative sparks

These conference call activities strive to rekindle the creative spark in the hearts of attendees.

10. Paint club

Combine a bit of creativity with a therapeutic outlet by making a club dedicated to everything artsy. If you’ve got regular virtual attendees for your conference calls, encourage them to express themselves with paint and canvas. Who knows, you might have a secret Bob Ross among you. Remote workers usually cherish having a creative outlet near their workspace, so this works well for helping teams relax as they bond. Make monthly themes for inspiration if it helps your teams, simple ones like “The view from my window” or abstract themes like “A Vision from my last dream.” Get them to share their progress at the start of each conference call and encourage them to express themselves through art!

11. Searching for life hacks

Who doesn’t love hearing the latest life-hack from their friends? Life hacks have soared in popularity and come in strange shapes and sizes, helping people with everything from freezing leftovers to passing exams. Ask them to research fun life-hacks before the conference and share them when they join, with live demos if they’re up for it. People could even search for a life-hack that might work in theory but needs a brave soul to carry it out. If someone massively fails while showing off their life-hack, just laugh it off and enjoy the ride! No point crying over spilled milk (we’ve seen that one!)

12. Design a team mascot

Continuing the creativity for your groups, how about a virtual session creating a mascot during your conference call? Building a mascot together is a powerful team-building exercise with a target at the end to take pride in. Use a virtual canvas to craft a mascot that represents the spirit of your team. Breakout rooms work well for this, so give them 10 minutes to brainstorm and sketch on a platform like Miro. They might return with a world-leading robot or a cup of coffee with arms, encourage any idea your teams come up with. When they rejoin, have each team present their mascot and explain its meaning. We think we might make one called “Sir Caffeine-a-lot”.

13. A virtual movie poster

Similarly to a team mascot, use a conference to unify your teams under one banner, or poster! We love movie posters, from retro to modern digital masterpieces, and we think they could serve as creative inspiration for a team-building exercise. Use an online group platform that lets teams create a funky PowerPoint. You could use themes like “romantic comedy,” “action thriller,” or “workplace drama” for inspiration. Create a blockbuster visual as an event that brings everyone together, and celebrate with a mock Oscar for “best team poster.”

14. Virtual mapping

A creative activity with a world map at the start or end of a conference can create a positive surge for everyone attending. Virtual mapping is especially great if you have people joining from faraway, remote locations. Zoom has a feature that lets attendees place a stamp, so share a big world map on your screen. Give some nice prompts to everyone for annotating the world map with stamps, like: 

• Where are you dialing in from?
• Where is one place on your bucket list?
• Where can I find the best food in the world?

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They’ll then start annotating the shared picture with stamps like hearts and stars. This is a great way to get everyone engaged and allows for imaginative questioning. Enjoy!

15. OOTD (outfit of the day)

For our last creative activity suited for conference calls, don’t underestimate the expressive power of clothing! There’s no harm in letting your team’s personalities shine with a fashionable (or terribly unfashionable) activity. Create a theme for silly dress, like movie characters or fashion through the decades. It adds a splash of fun to the day and lets teammates thread their way into new conversations about their style. You could be surprised who has a full pirate costume lying around!

Learning activities for growth sessions

These activities are aimed towards professional growth and healthy habit forming.

16. Promoting healthier living

Moving onto our deeper learning and growth sessions in a conference, why not try promoting and carrying out some healthier living exercises? We often overlook the simple but valuable principles of physical and mental wellness, and there are many to choose from. Start off by asking participants for one tip or practice they use to stay physically or mentally healthy. They might share a great smoothie recipe, a yoga video, or a self-help book. Try compiling what you find into a “Team health playbook” that everyone can access, regardless of the distance. Use the playbook for positive warmup energizers in future conference calls, and you’ll likely have healthier, deeply connected teams. 

17. Debate club

If you have teams ready to take things up a notch then why not try a healthy and insightful “debate club”? This activity helps people sharpen their wits and flex their persuasive muscles. Split your team into small groups and use some debate topics that contain just the right amount of thoughtfulness. Some we recommend to get things started are:

• Coffee vs. tea: Which is the superior beverage?
• Android vs. iOS: Which operating system is superior for smartphones?
• Is it ever okay to wear socks with sandals? (controversial, we know…)

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18. A timeline to treasure

Our final growth activity uses a collaborative timeline that shows teams just how much you cherish their efforts. Take a stroll down memory lane by creating a collab timeline of the whole team’s journey. Miro and Canva work well and ask each member to contribute their own meaningful moment. Milestones, bloopers, and achievements, all are welcome on the timeline!

Just for fun activities

Our final activities are aimed solely at having fun and helping teams unwind in a conference.

19. Multiplayer gaming sessions

Videogames are a catalyst for bringing people together, and experts recognize the value of gamification in the workplace. There are classic Jackbox Games available, but many games these days just need one person to own the game on Steam. Remote play can be a tool to bring people together in a conference (just for a short while, of course!).

20. Live meme battle

Continuing the silliness, have you ever seen two people battle it out using only memes? We have, and it’s an absolute blast! Create topics for the contest, for which two competitors need to provide the best meme, like: “teamwork fails” and “Monday mornings.” Use a platform like Zoom or MS Teams and let the rest of the group decide who threw down the best meme. Over time, give shoutouts to the office Meme Lord!

21. Lyrics per minute battle-off

For more fun, have teams test out their musical steel in a melodious showdown. Pairs or small groups work best for this one. Share your screen using an online tool dedicated to filling in the lyrics of famous songs. Lyrics Per Minute is a great fun choice for furious fingertip battles that revolve around famous lyrics. Teamwork never sounded so fun as an online battle of musical skills! Try this one out in your next conference call

22. Virtual happy hour

For our final activity, make sure you’re raising a toast to team bonding with a virtual happy hour after work. Celebrate your recent milestones or just a well-deserved break. It certainly doesn’t need to be only alcoholic! Send out packs for sparkling mocktails, herbal teas or even smoothies for relaxing after a long day. Cheers to your teams!

Elevate remote engagement with an incredible team retreat!

 Conference call activities with remote employees in mind help them to connect and deepen their team bonds. Yet the best way to get bonds established is with a twice-annual remote team retreat. Organizing face-to-face team building for meaningful connections is what we do best.

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Here’s what we offer:

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Not only this but we also have access to 160+ locations around Europe, APAC, the US, Latin America, and now Africa, meaning the sky is your limit when it comes to choosing the right location for you and your team.

An offsite remote team retreat, can forge unbreakable team bonds and bring people together in ways you didn’t know were possible!

Leave us to sort out the tricky logistics. Spaces are very limited, so get in touch now!