Creating Virtual Entertainment for a New Workplace

Virtual Bingo

Origami Animals

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Monkey the Dog

 

Creating Virtual Entertainment for a New Workplace

As some of our clients return to work and miss the magic touch that Events Companies add the live excitement that theming and entertainment added to live conferences and internal events, we thought to share ideas on how conference calls, internal meetings and zoom calls could be more interesting by including virtual ideas.

Zoom, Microsoft Team, WhatsApp and other video have defined working from home in isolation as a new way of working but don’t we all miss the banter and spontaneous fun that we’ve all had at events. Whilst we have new parameters of working, we can totally create these same moments by offering virtual entertainment and also doing interesting things ourselves to get reaction and recall of attendees.

By breaking up meetings with something out of the ordinary, we can engage more with the audience, create higher recall and improve moods and mindsets at a time that is quite stressful for many!

Here are 10 tips of how you can energise virtual meetings through more engaging spaces and activity.

1. CHANGE THE BACKGROUND

Whilst we appreciate how difficult it is working from home currently, instead of working from your usual work space, can you spice it up and work from your garden? Or a room with funky curtains to change the backdrop. How about adding a virtual backdrop behind you to match the theme of the meeting? With some planning, your backdrop could even be real and you could add some props to make it more real!

2. GET THAT FRIDAY FEELING AGAIN?

Missing Friday night drinks? Put your glad rags on and have a virtual drinks catch up. We can even enhance the ambience by organising a DJ to play your favourite tracks and encourage you to sing along with karaoke? You can even have dance-off with colleague!

3. MINDFULNESS AND MEDITATION

Your performance at home and work is directly correlated with how you feel and many people right now just aren’t feeling the love for lockdown, isolation and being away from work! Book a session with a mindfulness and meditation expert whose therapies can enable you to relax and think more clearly and feel on top of the world.

4. TALENT SHOW

Analysing your own skills and acquiring new skills is something that we have all done during this lockdown. We encourage teams to show off their newly acquired skills – how about organising your own Britain’s Got Talent. Perhaps even have a session to learn new tricks from a magician or juggler who can be really get people having fun!

5. Virtual Bingo

Bingo is such a fun game which you can also play virtually to make working more fun. Bingo is a classic game that most people know how to play, and a version for remote teams that is quick and easy adds fun element that could be repeated weekly but you could even hire a bingo caller to make it more memorable and fun!

6. Secret Santa comes early

Christmas doesn’t need to be once a year, you could make it rewarding by sending surprise gifts to teams each month from eachother and opening the gifts at a team meeting! Gifts could be related to work or even ones that make home-working more fun, such as unusual flavour coffee’s, interesting stationary gifts – just little personal touches to make people feel loved!

7. Pets having fun!

One of our favourites, is a company social insta account where you can post pictures of pets and animals doing silly things. Pets are great stress relievers during this time and people are doing so many funny things that they would love to share. It’s a great ice-breaker and giggle during a coffee break!

8. Origami Company Ark

You could ask each team member to cut squares of coloured or copy paper and then start creating the animals that travel on the Company’s Ark.

We can organise an origami artist to teach the team a new origami animal or you can go onto Bing

Each week teams can make a new animal to add to their collection from cranes, cats, birds, four legged furry friends to others Team members can build a whole menagerie of animals that they can add to your company ark!

9. Typing Speed Race

To start a typing test using typingtest.com or https://thetypingcat.com/typing-speed-test. Then, post your results on your company scoreboard. Everyone should take the same test to ensure its fair. Its so much fun but you can also learn a thing or two about touch typing!

10. Recipe Share

During lockdown, recipe shares, recipe videos and sales of , sales of baking ingredients have rocketed as people are having to cook and eating at home. Why not create a show and tell ‘recipe share’ themed around different foods – breakfast, lunch, dinner, picnic, family secret recipe etc?! You could share these recipe’s and create a company cook book! It’s takes  great skill to communicate a precise recipe with thought of the process and clarity for the reader, so they are training whilst they are doing! Our favourite recipes during lockdown have been:

Jack Munroe AKA @BootstrapCook

Jamie Oliver AKA @jamieoliver

Nadiya Husain AKA @nadiajhussain

BBC Good Food AKA @bbcgoodfood

Nisha Parmar AKA nishascookingagain

11. Virtual School Trips (Company Days Out)

We all loved face to face and going to new places, hotels, venues and team outings!  If you can’t make it to your favourite places for a day out, then they can come to you. Have a picnic with your remote team, and have a virtual tour of some really cool places. They don’t just need to be in the UK, you can even go abroad for the day to check out places you’ve always wanted to visit!

Check out some of the places we’ve been visiting;

• The Louvre: You don’t have to book a ticket to Paris to check out some of the famous pieces in the world’s largest art museum. The Louvre has free online tours of three famous exhibits
• Getty Museum: Los Angeles’s premiere gallery has two virtual tours, including “Eat, Drink, and Be Merry,” which is a closer look at food in the Middle Ages and Renaissance
• The Vatican Museum: The Sistine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basilica, and Raphael’s Room, are just some of the sites you can see on the Vatican’s virtual tour.
• British Museum, London: The Rosetta Stone and Egyptian mummies are just a couple of things that you’re able to see on a virtual tour of the museum.
• Metropolitan Museum of Art: Though the Met Gala was cancelled this year, you can still have a peak at the The Costume Institute Conversation Lab, which is one of the institution’s 26 online exhibits.
• San Diego Zoo: With what may be the most live cam options, this zoo lets you switch between koalas, polar bears, and tigers in one sitting.
• Monterey Bay Aquarium: It can be Shark Week every week thanks to live online footage of Monterey Bay’s Habitat exhibit

Source; https://www.goodhousekeeping.com

12. Online Team Building Lunch & Learn

A simple way to start with online team building is to get your virtual teams to meet and learn together – you could invite an expert to lead the session. You can find people to speak about topics like marketing, science, health and wellness, social media, home working, time management and more. A good learning session is about 60 minutes and you could encourage this learning during lunch – maybe have something delivered to them?

A great way of continuing the learning is encouraging the team to suggest a bank of topics and have 1 topic a week that is covered to add variety and also ensure that everyone’s needs are met.

13. Remote Gala Dinner

We are all missing the nights out, awards dinners and gala dinners right now so how about holding virtual gala events with your own cooked meal? You could even invite colleagues who are oceans apart. To make it more interesting, you could ask everyone to make the same meal from a menu so that it really feels like you are at an awards dinner. Perhaps you can integrate some professional entertainment such as a saxophonist whilst you are dining and then party or dancing games afterwards? You can also include a section on recognition awards as part of the evening.

14. Caricature or Drawing Competition

Most people would love to draw well but don’t know where to start, why not make this virtual team building activity with a caricaturist who can give an initial lesson? Create this experience into an event by allocating a person for each person to draw within 15-20 minutes. At the end of the time, bring
everyone into a main virtual meeting to showcase your portrait pictures!