In September, we wrote about our process of how to create a spectacular team meeting. These tips included taking time during meetings to stretch, engage in a team building game, watch a TED talk, and engage in a conversation with company leaders.
As we quickly adjusted to the new realities brought upon by COVID-19, we realized that we needed to take our team meetings online, via Zoom. While this move had the potential to make our team meetings more stagnant and cause our team members to feel more isolated, we instead took the opportunity to make some adjustments to how we conduct our meetings in order to strengthen our team bonds and sense of community.
Here are some ways we build bonds and stave off feelings of isolation:
Make Time for Fun
Prior to our Zoom meeting while everyone is congregating in the meeting room or on Zoom, we play a game of Pictionary (which is great on Zoom) or engage in light, fun conversations. This helps to bring back the “chatting around the water cooler” feeling of working with colleagues. It allows us to laugh, think creatively, and simply enjoy one another.
Dance Like Nobody’s Watching
At the start of the meeting we engage in 10 minutes of group stretching and dancing games (Think of Follow the Leader through dance) to get ourselves out of our daily routines of sitting in front of a computer. Our team especially has a lot of fun with the dancing games.
Meditation
As we’ve stated before, “Studies have shown that meditating has many positive effects on the body and mind. Psychology Today states that some of the scientifically-proven benefits of meditation include increased immune function, decrease in depression, anxiety, and stress, increased social connection and emotional intelligence, increased focus and attention, and improved ability to think outside the box.”
For some examples of how meditation has positively affected people’s lives, you can read real-life testimonials on the Outwit Trade website.
At the end of our meetings, we spend 5 minutes reflecting on an important take away.Our 5-minute meditations help us center our focus and allow us to calm our minds and bodies.
Employee Recognition
Now more than ever, it’s important for our team members to feel appreciated and valued. To focus on this, we have created “GoldStar Board”, which is an employee recognition program that allows us to highlight employees who have put in exemplary work within the past week. Our board is a point system to earn raffle tickets to some great prizes, which we award every quarter.
By making even simple adjustments to help engage our team, we have nurtured and strengthened our bonds as a team, which has had both positive results now and will continue to do so in the future.
