Many people are now working from home due to the coronavirus pandemic. This has meant we’ve needed to adapt to a new way of working and find effective ways to communicate with each other. Many businesses have turned to online chat and video call systems for meetings and catch ups between their team members.
Recently, Instantprint – a company that creates business cards, flyers, leaflets and more – surveyed 1000 UK adults who had started to work from home. They explored how people felt about the most common working from home phrases and found that the least hated is “let’s have a conference / Teams / Zoom call”. This shows how many of us are keen to see and speak to our colleagues.
If you’re trying to come up with some fun video call ideas to lift team spirits, take a look at some of our favourites below.
1.Two truths and a lie
In this game, each participant needs to come up with three statements about themselves – two of which are true, and one which is a lie. These statements can be as funny or silly as you like. Each person then reads their three statements out loud to the group, who must guess which statement is the lie. It’s a great game for finding out fun facts about your co-workers and having a laugh along the way!
2.Virtual pub quiz
A classic but a goodie – you can’t go wrong with a pub quiz. There are many ways to run a virtual pub quiz; each player could come up with their own round of 10 questions to ask the group, or you could nominate one person to be the quiz master. The rest is pretty self-explanatory, the person who answers the most questions correctly wins!
3.Pictionary
Pictionary is a really fun game for everyone – whether you’re a budding artist or a truly terrible drawer. The aim of the game is to correctly identify what a person is drawing within a set time limit. The best way to play is to split the group into teams and nominate one person to draw, then their team members will guess what they’re drawing. You’ll need paper, pen or pencil and a timer, and categories such as animals, landmarks, people or events. You can use online random word generators to make this easier.
4.Scavenger hunt
This is a fun and competitive game that you can play with your colleagues. One person needs to lead the scavenger hunt – and come up with a list of items that players need to find around the home. They will call out the item over the video chat, and all players must run, locate the item and bring it back to their computer – holding it up so the leader can see they’ve completed the task. It’s a race for first place – as the quickest person to find the object and get back to their computer wins.
5.Charades
This is another great game that can be played over video call. Each player needs to come up with a TV show, movie, book, play or famous person and act it out without speaking. The player can show how many syllables are in the word by holding the right number of fingers up to the camera, as well as let people know which category their charade is in. The first person in the group to correctly guess wins.
Which of these games will you play on your next social video call with your teammates?
