Are you finding it a challenge to engage people during a Virtual Session?
Worry no more! Here are 50 Virtual Icebreakers that would enable you to rock your next virtual presentation.
Before the commencement of any virtual meeting, send an email to your employees asking simple questions like, which was your first job? Which is the last movie you watched? Which was the last song you listened to? etc. Once the questions are shared, during the virtual meeting, responses can be shared by facilitators and employees can guess whose response it is.
For finding virtual icebreaker riddles, Reader’s Digest can be a great resource. The brain teaser or riddles should be tough yet solvable. Ask a riddle and let your employees delve deeper and answer.
Pop Quiz is an informal assessment given as a surprise. Here your objective is just to support group holding. Your test can be more enjoyable – like, “Match the verses with this present 80’s tune”. In any case, you may likewise utilize the Pop Quiz as a chance to give a clear picture to the members about the day’s topic.
In case you’re examining organization changes, for example, possibly you’ll begin by testing colleagues on organization history realities (for example “Which year was this organization founded?”).
This is one of the most agreeable meeting games, you can pull this game off with virtually no planning. Just set up a rundown of icebreaker questions, and you’re all set. Here you go:
1. If you presume to be a different species for a day, which one could you be? Why?
2. Which animal are you and why?
3. Hit the treadmill or become a couch potato?
4. Among your senior colleagues, who do you admire the most? Why?
5. How would you fix your Monday Blues?
Bingo cards can be created before the virtual meeting begins. For example, a person in the background, someone loses connection. Someone is wearing a tie-dye or a hat, etc.
Employees should be sent these cards before the meeting. Once the meeting begins, ask your employees to get their cards ready. Now, they can mark the situation whenever the meeting happens. Whosoever marks off all of the situations, he can type Bingo in the chat to win the game.
Employees can be encouraged to sell any interesting item assigned to them. Now, ask them to sell it to other employees in the group. Give them one minute to do so. The person whose product is purchased by a maximum number of employees will be the winner. This icebreaker helps in increasing the marketing skills of the employees.
Start your virtual meet by having everyone share their “rose” (like any positive instance that makes them feel grateful, happy, etc.) and also their “thorn” (a challenge that was a testing occasion). They can share anything related to work or non-work related. This is an amazing way to know each other beyond work.
Employees can be asked to share a short video answering a specific question like what do you think about teamwork? Or how do you support your co-workers? Etc. When all the videos are submitted, combine them and create a team movie and show it in your virtual meeting.
Create icons or tokens and place them throughout your intranet pages. Now, ask your employees to look for it and the top three contestants who spot it first should be given a prize each.
Encourage themed meetings and a few ideas can be – favourite colour day, book character day, animal day, fairy tale day, 80’s day, etc. Select the best employee of that day and present him/her with a small gift.
Ask your employees to come up with a headline for the company, 5 years into the future and share it in the meeting. It is quite an innovative virtual meeting icebreaker.
Use a virtual whiteboard and ask employees to add important milestones of the company like when was the company founded? Who started the company? Or when particular software was launched in the company, etc.?
Ask employees to submit pictures that exemplify your company’s value and culture. Take surveys for daily prompts. Towards the end of the year, based on common responses by the employees, a virtual culture book of the company can be created.
Ask employees to share the best photos on screen together. Compile this into a beautiful virtual company mural, get it printed and give it to all the employees. By creating a virtual company mural, every employee gets an opportunity to participate.
Employees can talk about the worst movie they have watched and a discussion can be initiated about the same as to why they feel so bad about it being so bad.
Design a map and share it with your employees for an intriguing online activity. As individuals start looking at the map, you can request them to highlight the area they were born or raised.
As the map tops off with highlighted areas, individuals will find out about how distinct their partners may be.
Share the Clue Virtual Murder Mystery link with your employees. Download free Crime Case Studies split them into teams, examine clues, review case files, and channel their inner detectives. The teams will work closely and communicate to solve the case successfully. The team that solves the mystery first wins.
Everyone orders something or the other online. Ask your employees to collect all the boxes they get during the delivery of their online ordered products. After they have collected those boxes, ask them to create something from the boxes. The one who makes the best product gets a prize.
Ask employees to share a few pictures of their workspace (work from home). Then, let others comment and support any improvements or suggestions.
Ask employees to share the weirdest thing they own. This allows employees to share something peculiar about their personal lives. They can speak about the instances that led to the peculiar happenings.
This is more of a morale booster and less of an icebreaker but is the best activity for all those who are working in home isolation.
Praise the heroes in your group. Commence your gathering with a word cloud survey, for example, “Who was your unsung hero this month?”
This icebreaker session creates an opportunity to appreciate the efforts of great individuals who were not recognized before.
Recognizing individuals for their contributions is a magnificent method to begin a gathering. Expect heaps of generous “awws”.
This is one of the most exciting and endearing icebreakers as it helps you in learning about your colleagues deeper than before. During this activity, you tend to get a closer look into their domestic workstations. This icebreaker is a combination of ‘Guess who?’ and a house tour.
Initiate an exercise of collecting the pictures of the workstations from the homes of your working colleagues. Later, add them to an online popular polling tool with a question: “Can you guess whose desk this is?” and give several options.
This can be done every day. Virtual meetings can begin with a few minutes of big talk about global news or events. Before the meeting begins, send the latest news to the team. Now, when the meeting begins, give everyone a minute to share their thoughts on the news without commentary or interruption. After everyone gives their opinion, 5 minutes of open group discussion can be held.
Come up with some silly awards for your employees. For example best-dressed award during the online virtual meeting, the fixer award for the one who fixes the technological issues, Mr and Ms Mute award for the employees who keep muted during the meetings, etc. Encourage the employees themselves to vote and select the winners of the awards.
Ask your employees to show off their gardening skills by giving them different tasks like instructing them to grow plants indoors or telling them to plant outside their homes. Then, they can share pictures of the same and also continue to share pictures of the growing plants.
Every week you can host a cultural celebration virtually. Ask your employees to share their recipes that they grew up eating, about two weeks in advance. Later on, these recipes can be categorized geographically and employees can share a story or a fact regarding the recipe during the virtual cultural celebration week.
A virtual map can then be created where your employees can leave comments. This will help them in knowing their peers personally.
Ask employees to invite each other for coffee breaks virtually and ask each other icebreaker questions. This would help them to recollect memories of their office days.
This conversation starter expects you to request employees to get their photographs or mail them to you.
Assemble the photographs and create a collage with them. Whenever that is done, employees should be encouraged to identify their peers from their past photographs.
Guidelines: Create virtual teams with 8 to 10 in each group. Give a sonnet (poem) to each group and clarify that each piece of verse has its flow. Tell members they will have 5 minutes to choose and rehearse developments that relate to the perusing of the verse. The employees at that point need to play out the sonnet and its development to the remainder of the groups
Pick up a genre that can be focused on by the book club. Employees can vote for it and a book can be selected. Give a month for the employees to read it and at the end of the month, ask employees to share their opinions about what they have read.
Here, you divide the group into teams using break rooms. Give them different themes. The teams must come up with 2 – 3 One-Liners that represent the theme. After teams are done, join back in the main meeting hall and award the best one-liner. Great way to discover hidden creative talent in your team.
Create challenges for health and wellness virtually. Set fitness goals for 30 days or 60 days. Every member can track his/her progress and share it with the other team members. Based on who did the best, small prizes can be given away to them.
To form deeper connections, employees can share a photo stream of their children and pets. Select a particular day, say Friday and organize a photo contest where the pictures can be shared.
If the members of your team are spread across various places on the planet, start your meeting by sending a virtual hello to everyone. Before you begin your virtual meeting call, run a word cloud by asking: “Where are you joining from?”
As your teammates start posting their areas, some of you yell out in ecstasy. Before the end, the word cloud will make a decent collection of the multitude of better places.
Simply ask your employees to share one accomplishment they had before they turned 18. It is a unique and engaging way of encouraging them. Some might even come up with interesting stories.
An appreciation day can be organized every week or every month where employees can appreciate or recognize each other’s efforts. Ask employees to vote one by one and then see who has won. It helps in boosting the morale of the employees.
Using the Pictionary word generator and whiteboard feature, move to the virtual game world. Create teams. Now in every round, designate an artist in each team and by using the generator they need to draw to get the word.
Let us say, your meeting is about culture. Now, divide your employees into small groups and ask them to think for a minute and come up with a word that describes culture. Once they have shared with their groups, you can invite them to share their word with the entire room. This game encourages everyone to think about a certain topic in smaller groups ahead of time, which could increase participation during the meeting.
A virtual trivia night can be conducted. Teams can be created, questions can be prepared (related to the company) and then trivia can start. Unique and thought-provoking questions can be asked to make the game enthralling. There can be three rounds of 10 questions each. 45 seconds will be given to answer each question. The team with the maximum number of score points wins.
Prepare a list of karaoke songs (ask them in advance, which song they like). On the karaoke night ask them to sing one by one. Other employees can be on mute, till their turn comes up. It can simply be a joyous night.
It helps in exploring people’s artistic side and brings them closer. Host a painting session. Before the meeting, ask your employees in advance about their supplies to participate in the activity.
Organize a contest where all the participants are expected to take photographs of some natural happenings. The best picture will be selected and the winner will be given a prize.
Disclose to your workers that you might want them to be involved in your presentation and they will do this by yelling out specific words when you point with your right hand and certain words when you point with your left hand (e.g., pick the words “yes” or “no” and pose inquiries occasionally all through the exercise for the crowd to react to)
Before beginning, do a training round in which you point your left or right hand and get them to offer responses.
It can be a friendly competition. Organize a baking competition online and for doing so, prepare a theme. Employees can cook what they like. They can share the pictures of the baked delicacies and the one with the best picture will be declared the winner.
Ask your employees to think about their life and sum it up in a six-word memoir. Give them a day to think and in the next meeting ask them to share it one by one. Let others express their views on the same.
Divide your employees into groups. One by one asks every group to hold a note (like Om, or Aum) until they lose out of breath. Once an employee loses breath, the next person can continue. Let’s see which team can hold a note for longer.
Ask employees to write one lie and two truths about themselves. One after the other they can show them and other employees can guess which is true and which is false. It is an interesting game that helps everyone to know about each other.
Ask employees to decide on a topic and then let every employee say three words about the topic, thus creating a story. It is entertaining and creative. Towards the end, you will see fun-filled stories coming up.
It is purely to know about each other very well. Create different groups of employees and ask them to write the same and different things about them. Then they can discuss it on the virtual whiteboard.
Ask employees to write about their childhood dreams and then discuss how they changed and what they have become now. Discussions can start as to how priorities have changed in everyone’s life.
Use it. Share it. Have fun with it!
