Due to the current Covid-19 control measures, many companies offer the opportunity of home office for their employees. These new circumstances lead to new challenges for many teams and team leads. How to keep the team spirit and motivation only via the screen? How to keep up the individual relationships and the trust among each other?
We at CheMondis are facing these same challenges. Our workplace, the beautiful office in the heart of Cologne, is closed for many months already, because we take our responsibility very seriously to contribute to bringing the amount of Coronavirus cases down.
After spending many months at home now, we realized that we were losing the motivation to spend the private evenings in Zoom. Therefore, we thought about how to revive the joint team activities in the evening to make them fun again. To make them not feel like another meeting, but like meeting your friends.
With today’s blog article we would like to give you some inspiration on remote team activities that can bring you lots of fun and unite your team – at least for us at #teamchemondis, it worked!
Team Activities Take a Whole New Meaning During the Lockdown.
Everyone knows it – most of us spend 8 hours or more in front of the laptop every day where Zoom meetings alternate with normal calls.
Keeping everybody engaged in after work team activities therefore needs much more than a Zoom meeting invite.
Our Office & Community Manager Alina met the challenge! Beginning of January, she set up an entire lockdown activity plan with the goal to take our company culture and employee engagement from home to a whole new level!
Generally, when it comes to #teambuilding and after-work activities at CheMondis we are doing a lot! It is part of our culture to meet for Karaoke, a beer, or field trip if the time allows it.
Alina knew: to engage the entire team to participate in the remote activities, requires creativity and variety in the type of activities.
Different categories for the lockdown events were created, here we go with our TOP 3:
1. Culture Night – Foods & Drinks from my Region!
Working in a multinational company is something we all enjoy and benefit from a lot. Still, there is so much to discover and learn about the different home countries of our colleagues.
Our Culture Nights were born. We kicked it off with a virtual trip to Eastern Europe where our Business Development Manager Oksana (from Ukraine) and one of our Customer Development Experts Paulina (from Poland) and Daria (from Russia) taught us how to prepare a typical polish dish named Rakuchy.
Rakuchy is like an apple pancake that gets topped with jam or honey and is super delicious. The team received an ingredients list in advance, and we spent an amazing 90-minutes together preparing the dish, speaking about Baltics, and enjoying a delicious dinner together.
Thanks again to team Eastern Europe – It was amazing! We are looking forward to the next culture night, hosted by team Turkey.
2. Who Has the Best Poker Face?
Under the sponsorship of our Product Owner David, last Tuesday night was all for our Gamblers! After a quick warm-up round, we started with the 2nd CheMondis Poker Tournament on an online poker website after kicking off this event already during the first lockdown in March. Same as last time it was a big success and we are already looking forward to round three.
3. Online Game Night.
Two weeks ago, our first online game night took place with around 15 participants. It has been a bit challenging to find some nice games that are playable via Zoom – but in the end, we had a blast. Our warm-up round was all about how good we really know each other – everybody sent in a story about themselves and we were guessing which story belongs to whom. After that, we played Werewolf, a social deduction game in which players attempt to uncover each other’s hidden role.
Surely, this will not be the end and we are already in the planning for the next activities since the feedback from the team has been amazing.
Next Friday for instance, we are excited to virtually meet for this year’s carnivals party to keep Cologne’s traditions. We are looking forward to a nice program, including a costume contest. #chemondisalaaf.
Now It Is Up to You.
Make the best out of the situation and motivate your team – we are sure you will not regret it!
Thanks for taking the time to read the CheMondis blog.
