Our Tips for a Successful Online Team Event

It's been 10 months since the GameDuell family left its headquarters and many of us are missing the office.

On average, our team members stay with us for almost 8 years. That’s quite a long time, especially in the tech industry. We believe it’s our company culture and team spirit that make us such a strong team. That is why we miss the daily morning walks to the coffee machine, the fresh slice of bread from the bakery next door, the small chats, the spontaneous get-togethers in the evening, as well as our biweekly company meeting, the birthday singing, and all of our GameDuell events like the family and friends barbecue or our Halloween and summer parties.

The social aspect of remote working is still a challenge, but a challenge we accepted. For this reason, we set out to create an online event for our team at the end of last year and the numerous hours invested in the preparation proved successful.

Are you thinking about creating an online event for your team and not sure how to do it? Here is what we did and our tips for making your team event a success.

What did we do?

We followed our motto “Bringing people together to have a good time with games” and this time, it was our team we brought together to have a good time with games.

How did we do it?

Thankfully, we are a gaming company and this means that developing games, and of course playing games, is already our passion so we followed the steps of game production. We prepared a concept, went into the planning phase, then put our creative minds together to go from pre-production to production, and finally testing. The launch of our first online event, the “Newbie Match”, was a big success for our new team members of 2020. It was so much fun that we had to do it again and let the entire GameDuell team join. This brought about the launch of our “Christmas Match”.

Here are our tips for a successful virtual team event:

1. Find out what fits best for your team. If your team doesn’t enjoy games in real life, they most likely won’t enjoy them virtually either. Think about successful events you’ve had in the past and try to create an online version of them.
2. Involve your team. The more people that give input, the better your event will be. Our team’s expertise contributed to the success of the event and made it easier for our People & Culture team to execute the event.
3. Choose the right tool. We now have access to numerous tools for virtual meetings. Not every tool offers the same features and functions. We needed to try out three different tools until we found the best fit for our needs.
4. Choose a moderator. Although your event should be an informal get together, it’s important to have someone that is taking the reins when needed and follows your schedule.
5. Try to stick to a strict schedule. Online events can be tricky. To avoid any unnecessary hiccups, set up a very strict time frame and stick to it. It’s better to have more content and activities to do than ending up with not enough.
6. Test, Test, Test! It doesn’t matter if your event is about social interaction and chatting or it features a game or informational segment. Take the time to test your plan and schedule.
7. Be interactive! If you decide on a game, make sure every participant can be involved and that the technical requirements are given. Even if there is a friendly competition and every team is keen on winning, try to be flexible with the rules. In the end it’s the fun that counts.
8. Share information with your team. Not everyone enjoys social communication in online meetings and that’s totally fine. Try to communicate clearly in advance what will take place during the event to enable your team members to decide whether they would enjoy it or not.
9. Enjoy the process. If you have fun while creating your event, it will most likely lead to the creation of something really enjoyable for your team.

Read next: Christmas is the Time for Giving!

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