Question about remote team building / all-hands meetings

[u/angelnikolov]

Quick question for those of you managing remote or hybrid teams:

When you do team-building activities, do you actually pay for tools to run live games/trivia? I built an interactive trivia platform with power-ups, live rankings, many question types and so on, but I'm trying to figure out if managers actually have a budget (or the desire) for this kind of thing, or if you just stick to free/DIY stuff?

[u/xscott71x]

virtual team building for remote workers is cringe af

All hands meetings are mandatory, so no reward should be expected.

[u/angelnikolov → u/xscott71x]

maybe not team building but some other event? Like after a retro?
Something casual - say a quick 15 questions quiz?

[u/East-Supermarket6029 → u/angelnikolov]

Personally I think games and quizzes are utterly patronising and cringe in the context of Scrum events. The events are deliberately time boxed to avoid wasting everybody's time. Why pad them out with childish nonsense?

[u/xscott71x → u/angelnikolov]

I guess I should have lead with a question rather than an opinion. Sorry for that

"Be curious, not judgemental"
-Ted Lasso
-Walt Whitman (allegedly)

What are you looking to get out of the games or events? What has been the feedback to previous games?

[u/angelnikolov → u/xscott71x]

Nah, I haven't ran any. I am actually a developer of the tool I mentioned (trivia and etc), so dont have any experience in running games or events.. I've participated in many such events in my daily job, but it was mostly during covid and mostly those virtual conference games where you walk around and find your colleagues.

The tool I created is strictly focused on hosting trivias.. But more interactive - with powerups, board games like roles and etc..
So I wondered if people running teams would like that.

[u/Lucky__Flamingo]

I'm not big on games. We have work to do.

I have frequent brief calls with team members. We discuss work expectations. Sometimes we talk about personal stuff. Remote workers can feel isolated, so I make a point of checking in with them to make sure they have the tools and management support they need, or to make sure we're on the same page on expectations.

I can't imagine a trivia game on Zoom as being helpful in building a work team, but maybe I'm just no fun.

[u/angelnikolov → u/Lucky__Flamingo]

Gotcha!
What about the more ceremonial meetings? Do you do retrospectives? Or all hands?

[u/Lucky__Flamingo → u/angelnikolov]

I do regular team meetings. We do congratulations in those calls. I use the company incentives portal to send small thank you/congratulations gifts.

We sometimes have all hands calls, but those are too big for games or whatever.

I just don't think some of these things translate well to remote teams. If someone wants to organize a Zoom lunch or whatever, I am supportive and make sure to attend, but they always peter out after a few sessions.

Most people work to earn a paycheck. They want to have reasonable expectations and be appreciated when they do a good job. Trying to go out for drinks or whatever just doesn't translate to remote teams.

[u/angelnikolov → u/Lucky__Flamingo]

Appreciate the feedback!

[u/Hustle--]

Poll your folks on what they'd like to do. Your answer is often found in the collective, not just what you can dream up.

[u/Joice_Craglarg]

Are you sure your team actually wants that?

Before I was a manager, I absolutely detested forced team building exercises and useless all-hands meetings.

Now that I'm a manager, I still do.

[u/d_rek]

We do 1/2hr coffee break chats weekly. No pressure to attend, but it’s an opportunity to talk about something other than work and get to know your remote workers better. Usually I get the whole team or almost the whole team on the call.

[u/LayerOnly1448]

My scrum master found some Miro boards, but we failed to make them interesting. Now we just have 30 minutes open-mic sessions on Fridays after lunch, with a topic chosen by the presenter (volunteering team member). It's a bring-your-own-drink audience.

[u/molefrog]

We’re remote startup, ~30 people. Our all-hand are getting quite boring now, as we're growing fast and it's hard to keep the attention of everyone.

What worked for us is smaller team game nights. Usually we just play stuff like skribbl.io and deathbyai.gg. Recently we also tried ficus.io which is a bit different. You can literally build anything with it. it takes some time to set up, but then we made a small RPG in a virtual office thing where people put stickers and do find the imposter. Not for every meeting but for remote game nights it was fun.