#035 Steal These Ideas To Connect Your Remote Team And Build Culture

2020 has been a wild year; we don't even need to say it anymore. It's time to lean into human connections and building culture within your teams. In this episode, Kelsey and Bri share a ton of EPIC ideas to create moments to boost your team culture through games, events, or memorable moments.

Biggest Takeaways From This Episode

In May, we surveyed working Remotely and Flexibility. Over 35% of participants wanted their leaders to build more culture breaks to connect with their team.

As your organization plans the end of the year, it's time to come up with a way to connect your team! Here are some ideas.

Host Trivia! A Chatterkick favorite!

We highly suggest partnering with a Trivia host. We LOVE Cyndi at Hawks Coffee Shop in Sergeant Bluff, Iowa. Going the partnership route leaves the logistics and asking questions up to your Host, while your team gets to focus on the fun. We used RingCentral (a Zoom product) to generate random breakout rooms so that teams could collaborate on their answers. This is the easiest way to get everyone involved in a game.

Do it yourself! You could purchase a Trivia Night package from quizrunners.com. Make sure your Host is prepped, has done a run-through to test the technology, and knows the trivia events timing, scoring, and format. Nothing puts a damper on trivia more than fumbling through logistics.

Create a fun game using Kahoot.

Kahoot is an entertaining way to make a quiz, poll, or game interactive. This will take some time, but someone on your team can create a Kahoot game with trivia or quiz questions about the organization, add in some funny personal stories, or who said it questions to make it fun. Your whole team can play; all they have to do is join on their mobile device!

Tournament of games!

Make a whole day or afternoon out of playing games. Create small teams within your organization and create challenges or fun for them to complete or even compete with other teams. It can be a round-robin tournament or the team that racks up the most points wins! Here's a preview of the ChatterGames that took place in the office with hundreds of solo coups.

Send a game kit to all of your team members.

Hit up Walmart's Black Friday board game sale and grab a game for each team member. You could send a family game to those with young kiddos, or a party game for entertainers, or a strategy game for your resident nerds. Buying a game that fits each team members' personality would be ideal. Box the game up with some snacks, beverages, or even gift cards to create a full game night experience. Ship the boxes to each team member and have each person go around and open their gift while you have a team happy hour. One person might even have a game that could be played remotely.

4-Bidden and The Meme Game are Chatterkick favs

Surprise Happy Hour.

This idea requires next level spy work. Connect with your team members' spouses to coordinate them purchasing a beverage or snack for your team member. Have them hide it somewhere in their house (it's critical they let you know where they hid it)! When you join a team meeting, call out where each team member should look to find the surprise. Enjoy a drink or snack just hanging out. Watch Beth surprise our team with a celebratory drink in honor of Chatterkick winning an award.

Personalized gifts sent directly to homes.

Have the team leaders purchase personalized gifts for each team member and send them to their homes to open up in a team meeting. When we did this at Chatterkick, we were released into Target with a budget to get each team member a unique, thoughtful gift. It was really easy and extremely fun to pick something out for each team member. The best part was just showing that we pay attention and know their individual interests and passions.

Send a DoorDash gift card to each team member.

Plan a remote team luncheon! Send each team member a Door Dash gift card and have them choose a meal that floats their boat. I'm not gonna lie; eating on camera can be super awkward, so maybe have a video or music to play in the background. Our team has taken moments like this to watch social media documentaries or films! We suggest Chef or Fyre Festival.

Go big with a coordinated culture kit!

Take a queue from Applied Underwriters and go big as your team is at home. As they moved their in-person Indy 500 viewing party to a virtual event, they killed it by putting together toolboxes for their participants. You can read all about the deets from "The Greatest Indy 500 Watch Party in the History of the World." Here's what we took away:

Put together a food kit with full ingredients to make an incredible meal.
Have a chef give a live tutorial on how to prepare the meal at home. The team can follow along as they prep their dinners at home.
Curate extra special swag to help your team rep your brand.

You can never go wrong with Swag!

We know Swag takes a lot of coordination and dollars. Make it easy by partnering with organizations like SwagUp. We've been really impressed with their quality of products, ease of warehousing and shipping, and the ability to scale up and down your packages. Send personalized Swag directly to their home!

Throw a remote cocktail party!

We saw this idea on a blog from the Bureau Community. They've had a lot of success with this one. They suggest sending out a cocktail kit with mixers, barware, and gift cards for buying alcohol locally. Then put on a virtual demonstration of how to craft different specialty drinks. You could even have a local mixologist or bartender do a live tutorial. Not everyone drinks adult beverages, so include non-alcoholic options. But this idea sounds super fun!

Honorable Mentions:

An at-home scavenger hunt! Create a game for the team to collect or find items throughout their home to complete the scavenger hunt.
Print out an escape room. Get each team member an escape room kit. Have a kickoff meeting to tell everyone the mission and then send them off to do the escape room activity. Make sure they have a partner to phone a friend or a guide to help. escape-team.com has a mission and app.
Split your teams into groups and have them compete in online games like PlayingCards.io. They have an amusing version of Cards Against Humanity, it's called Joking Hazard. Definitely NSFW but totally safe for your wild friends.
7 Best Zoom games to play!
A gift exchange or secret Santa - we all know these are terribly played out and can be stressful.

Want your question to be answered on the generation social media podcast? Tell us what it is here!

Transcript

This text below is a straight up audio transcript of the episode. In our humble opinion, we think the audio podcast sounds much better in its original form. We have not edited the transcription below so there are indeed some grammar errors (some quite funny, in-fact).

What's up, everybody!

We know this is the social media podcast, but we talked a lot about different tactics strategies, free ideas this year. And we're going to switch gears because 2020 has been a wild one. We're heading into the holiday season. We're heading into a lot of organizations' end of the fiscal year. And one of the things that different leaders and HR teams are talking about right now is like how do we bring our team together without actually bringing our team together? Now you'll remember.. Oh I wish I could just pick this episode out of my hat because I know we talked about it in a couple of episodes, but we did a survey at the beginning of, I guess, COVID and moving people into the remote game. And this was a couple of months in I believe. And one of the major takeaways from that survey was we asked the question, what could your business leaders do to help make the remote game better?

And 35% of respondents said culture breaks. I really just want to connect with people like we did with happy hours in real life. So today Bri and I are going to be talking about and just sharing ideas that we've done at Chatterkick to build culture and connection within our team ideas that we've heard or that we've seen from other people. But we're just going to share everything that we can think of and let us know which of these epic parties that you end up doing remotely and what you would have done differently. We're really excited to kind of jumped into things. Yeah, what's up Bri?! What I think is cool is that even before COVID, Chatterkick was really focused on making sure we did some sort of team party a couple of times a year. I remember there was a thing where we Kelsey you and somebody else at Chatterkick created like escape rooms in our office.

So this is like something that transitioning this to COVID has been like, not a challenge, but like a little bit of just like a, something to think about to make sure that the team stays connected when we're not all, even if it is happy hours, but also just in the office, like shooting the stuff every day, like water cooler stuff, you know. It's obviously way easier to do this when you're in an office, but at Chatterkick, we've always had an element of a remote team. And so it's something that, you know, in the past, we've I think when we really first started doing this culture has been something that's always important to us and coming together has always been important us, but for a while there, we were just like, okay, we're doing this thing. You guys have your own party. And it was great to just connect and, and like you were saying, just talk and do water cooler talk, but we weren't connecting together as a team when we used to do that. So over the last couple of years, we have really made a big focus on, okay, these big events that we're doing. When I say big, a lot of these are very DIY events Kristy Plucker and I really kind of get into the internet and figure out how to make some games. But we've really tried to figure out a better way to include our entire remote team into what we're doing.

And now that's our whole team.

Now that's all of the people,

All the people. And I think it's so interesting now that we're towards the end of the year, because right now most people would be talking about holiday parties or end of year parties, or like in January, February, December, whenever it always fluctuates depending on the company there's usually some major, get together with every person at the company during this time of year, just to kind of celebrate another year, gone by celebrate like good things that are to come and kind of unify everybody going into the next, the next year of the same or growth kind of thing. And it's so different now than it was last year. But also like it's so different than it was eight months ago when we all went remote. So when we all went remote, I swear like every other week, or maybe even every other day, I was doing a happy hour with somebody. It was my college friends. It was my work friends. It was my old work friends. It was somebody, everybody wanted to do a happy hour and like connect because we all felt so like isolated in our houses. And I think we've kind of gotten used to isolation.

We've all like retreated to our homes. And are like, well, I we're doing that same thing that we did in like going out to the bar, like, you know, when your friends would ask you and you're like, Oh, I'm already in my PJ's, I'm just going to stay in my PJ's and now it's like, Oh, you want to have a zoom call? Like, nah, I'm going to watch Netflix.

Right. And also like, we all just came off of, I don't know where everybody listening to this is, but like in the last two weeks maybe where we live, it got significantly colder. So we're no longer doing like outside things anymore either. Which means we're not, it was like this time between like June and October, it was like a fairy dust had fallen upon all of us because we could go outside and socially distant, be around other people. Right? Like you could see them.

Like, without it being, I'm not like freezing and I'm not like having to travel real far, but you could go and like, you could meet somebody at a patio or you could go for a walk and like actually see somebody. And now we're kind of going back inside. And as well as a lot of us are going back to work from home. We never stopped working from home, but some people are going back into that situation entirely. And it's like, we forgot about human connection because we got like, this has become so normal.

Yeah. I know. That's one of those buzz words that nobody wants to say, like, this is the new normal, and we're all tired of hearing that phrase. But what we can't do, like you said, is forget about the value of the human connection. And I know every organization has a different policy on whether or not they call this a Christmas get together, a holiday, get together and end of year, the fiscal year, whatever is important to you. But let's be honest during the holidays. Like, ain't nobody want to be Macaulay Culkin' this holiday,. Did you like what I did there, instead of saying Home Alone? You picking that up. And I think that this is just important. There's a lot of people that are spending this time alone, who, who wouldn't typically be alone. And so building this into your, your team events and networking, like this could really make somebody's day and really build a better, I don't want to say trust, but builds a strong connection with the organization.

If they take time and be thoughtful during this time, it says a lot. It speaks volumes and it really, it puts kind of solidifies like, okay, this is a company I want to work for. They're paying attention to me. And they see that like, this is weird, but they're supporting me in this way. So let's kind of talk about some of these epic ideas that we've either done at Chatterkick or ideas that we've seen other people do. I wanted to start by saying our office is suckers for trivia, like super obsessed with trivia. A couple of us, six of us go to trivia at a local coffee shop like monthly. And so a couple of months ago, we actually reached out to the coffee shop. It's Hawks Coffee. I know we've talked about them in multiple episodes, but love Hawks, love, Cindy love everything that they're doing over there.

So we actually reached out to Cindy and was like, Hey, would you be willing to do trivia remote for our whole entire team? Everybody's going to join. We use RingCentral, but you could join Zoom and do a really fun trivia with everybody. And Cindy just be the host. And so she did it. Everybody joined. We sent everybody into like different breakout rooms. It was so fun. And the best part about it was that somebody else was hosting it. And that we didn't have to worry about the logistics of like figuring out who was going to be on each other's teams. And she didn't know anybody. She just did random and it was super fun. And I know that Cindy is still willing to do this for different like groups of friends and organizations. So if you're in the Siouxland area or if you're not, since it's remote, like reach out to Cindy at Hawk's coffee shop and schedule one of these trivia sessions for the small budget that it is it's worth it, just connecting and having everybody play a game together.

That breakout room scenario with that was also like an HR person's dream because it was random. So you got, you didn't get to pick your teams. You were paired with just somebody else at the company and 2-3 person groups that you may not work with all the time. And then we all got back together to still like co-mingle and like do all the answers together as a whole team. So that like, get to know somebody that isn't in your group. I know it just naturally happened. And I didn't think about that at the time, but like looking back on it, I'm like, that's an HR person.

It's really fun. I mean, obviously we're all on our computers, so we operated off the honor system, like no Googling, anything. And then like you're keeping track of your points and putting it in the chat. So there's some of that that like, okay, let's just be adults and have fun and not like cheat, cause that's lame cheating is lame. But I do think like trivia now for us, I know you guys just did this while I was out. And I was so jealous that you got to do this, but like trivia is just like a really fun time because everybody has different strengths, different things that they love and they know. And so it's just a really good, like equal leveling playing field and super fun always to do.

Yeah. I had a former jeopardy contestant on my team, so it wasn't super clear, so we crushed it. But trivia always going to work for us. But it's that kind of same idea. If you don't have an office full of trivia, there are things like when we all got on and did that like virtual cards against humanity, also same idea, a little less PG, but same idea. And, but it's just a different like option to play a game virtually with everybody because that software, which is escaping me currently at the moment, what it's called,

But it's... I'll find it and put it in. Yeah, I'll put in a link, but it's not called cards against humanity because of that trademark, but it is online. But to your point though, it is not a safe for work game. So you really have to have a real startup culture with no HR to jump into that game. But I will say the game thing is just always fun and there are tools like you could use Kahoot and make your own custom game. This is going to take time, but it's always fun to do like either trivia about your company or and ad some just like personal, funny things in there, or guess who said it type of games, but using a system like Kahoot, which is free. And college, students are obsessed with it and love it. It's always a fun way to do like group games. So definitely trivia is my number one. That card game is fun. Maybe not as safe for work for two to who is always a fun trivia game to do for sure. What other, what other games are ideas? Heads up? I think you could probably do remote! Yep. Heads

Up. And then also like you could put together, like, not necessarily a trivia, but like we did a Disney theme, like questions and that was based on one person at the company. And like they really loved Disney. So we did a Disney themed trivia. And so it's like, if it's your boss's birthday or it's somebody's birthday and they have like a really big thing in their personality that, you know, they love, like if it was Kelsey, I would make it Red Bull trivia because that's like a moniker orher personality. That'd be a short trivia game. You don't know. I could make that long

Red bull in hip hop. I'm in. Red

Bull and hip hop. There's every other one's an audio round.

Well, that's the thing that I want to say about trivia though, is so we've done where like Cindy came in and hosted everything and everybody got to play. So it was really fun. And we did the Disney one where I just went and found a bunch of Disney, Disney questions. I flailed hosting that big time. I like, because I just did it last second. I had a bunch of questions. I couldn't figure out what the right timing for like how many minutes for each question. I forgot to send the questions out. Like it was, it was still fun, I think for everybody, but I really flailed as a host and there was a lot of pressure on being the host and not having ever hosted before. So again, like I highly recommend Cindy or there's a million trivia like online things that you can buy. I know Kristy and I have found one, we'll put that link in the generationsocialmediapodcast.com On this episode where you can literally buy the whole trivia deck. And it's like a PowerPoint side that you go through. But again, somebody on your team is going to have to be a host, so they're not going to play. And they have to bring a lot of energy because, or it's just like a quiz and it's not very fun.

Right. I know like a couple of games have also come out with like online versions as well. Like I think Scattergories came out with one that you can play on zoom. I know that there's different ways to like play bingo or, but it's just, there are a million options right now to play different types of games.

When you might have to, if you have a larger team, like we have a small team of like 18 ish. If you have a larger team, you might have to have like, okay, well these 15 people that we drew, like they're playing this game, these 15 people are drawing or doing this game, you know, one year I got absolutely wild and found like 15 different games that you could play with solo cups. Cause it was a cheap way for us to do like culture. And we had a whole tournament of like solo cups games. You had to play every station against another team. It was wild. You can't really do that remotely, but you could have a couple of different games and have people play a couple rounds and then do a point system and whoever wins gets a gift card or something. I just, I think the game thing is fun.

One idea that I did have is a little different. I haven't seen anybody do it, but I think it would be fun is again, I think this is better if you have a small team or just to show that you know, your team is to buy games, like buy a game and send it to them in the mail with like a family game night kit, or if you're me and don't have a family like a drink and a game and send it out to everybody. So they get a package in the mail and like one person is bound to have a game that you could probably play together as a group or a couple of people. It would be one way to kind of get that like real life experience, but still bring in the game thing? I think that would be so fun. I would love to get like, something like that from the organization

That kind of transitions into another cool thing that Chatterkick has done for like team building. We won an award last year and Beth managed to surprise every single. This was before shutdown like before COVID, but Beth managed to surprise every single one of our remote workers by like finding their spouses or significant others and like helping them like by surprises and hide them around their house. So we're like all on a zoom call and she's like calling out like Molly K your surprise is in the closet behind you. Like, she has a list of like where all the things are and like, it was so cool and everybody like, even, especially like, it was a great way to make everybody who was remote feel so like included in it. And it was just a very cool way to like have a toast to all of us in all of our good work that was so I don't know if it was simple tracking down all of our significant others,

Probably not, I mean, it's just one of those things that takes time, but I will say the one thing that I would have done differently though, is like, there were a couple people that didn't get anything. And because of just that, like not connecting is if you are going to do that, you need to plan it ahead of time and make sure that you get everybody because it's really awkward if somebody is left out of that. And I know everybody was a good sport and they just kind of grabbed something near them. But I think that it's really, it's a really easy way to again, like create that real life excitement. And because it was all like a beverage, we then had a cheers and happy hour together. It was really fun. I think you could do the same thing with getting one year. This was, I don't even think this was the year end.

This was just in like the middle of the year. But we had gone to a, like an executive team retreat. And after that, all of us that went to that, we got money. And then Beth released us in target and we bought everybody on the team, a gift from the leadership team and mailed it out to everybody again, it was like a unique gift to them that reminded us of them, or just show that we listened and know what's important to them or something that they love. And we sent everybody a gift in the mail. And did the same thing. I'm like having everybody open those gifts together on a RingCentral which again is nice. It's just being thoughtful. It doesn't have to go. You don't have to go crazy. But I think that those moments are, again, a thing that, that has your team just think of like, Oh man, these guys really know me and they care about me. Just a good, good way to do a gift exchange because sometimes literally gift exchanges are stressful and so hard if you haven't had a chance to get to know somebody, but that is another route you could go is literally doing a gift exchange. Yeah.

Yeah. I'd say gift exchange, something like that. Also sending like a door dash gift card out to everybody and like, say how about a team lunch, everybody order your favorite door dash. We all know Molly E's is going to be Jimmy John's, but like tend to give her door dash. Like she's not going to order Jimmy John's.

Yeah. I want to, I want to share this like super next level idea. Like this would take a really a ton of planning, but one of my friends shout out to Sonia Wilson. So she was a part in... this has this has nothing to do with the holidays, but this was a part of their strategy on taking an in-person event and going to an online event. So this is it was for, they called it "The Greatest Indy 500 Watch Party In The History Of The World." So it already event already had like a crazy name anyway. So what they did for this though, and I think this would be great. They really went considerably above and beyond. But again, you're not spending a lot of money on travel and maybe your budget elsewhere. So they put together a race day toolkit or toolbox, I guess it included a full dinner kit with a 40 ounce porterhouse steak.

And then that had like everybody got this kit. And then there was a featured video with like a Michelin 5-star chef that led a cooking segment on making what was in the kit. So you got all of the ingredients and you watched this video that was fully branded fully paid for by the organization on how to really like cook and dress this steak. That's amazing. It was incredible. And, and on top of that, they also had a full box of swag. Everybody loves swag. I mean, you can't have enough of it, but they put a full toolkit together of like here's a meal that you can make. Here's a video on how to put the meal together in a swag that you can wear while you're doing it. That was like next a level thoughtful way of putting this together. There's a, there's a full article on it. And it goes through everything that was in the kit, how they did the event, they did like a full agenda and everything. But I just thought that the way that they put that toolbox together was extremely well done, extremely well done.

Speaking of swag, I was at a company at one time that like around Christmas time, every year they gave Christmas presents to the entire company and it was always swag. It was always like swag. That made sense. Like, it was like a puffy coat. I still have it somewhere. It's like, like a down coat and a beanie and gloves and like a scarf for like of like a Columbia vest kind of thing. And like, no, it's not, no one went to them. And it was like, okay, hi, where's my Christmas bonus. Like I bet that's great. It was just like, everybody was so happy just to like be thought of it because they had asked our sizes at one point. And so it was like on our desk and like a wrapped package, like our kit of like different winter items that also were all branded by the company. So we were walking poster boards around the city and in this like bright, teal color. And at one point, one day, we all had to come into the office in that teal color or something. And I got on the train and looked around and I was like, Oh, well we look like a mob, like a flash mob about to happen.

But I think that that's just like the swag thing. I think I totally get it. And we've gone down this route before, like getting swag for a team is really hard cause you got to collect sizes and sometimes it's hard to pick. Everybody has different styles and Beth and I have gone back and forth on hats for nine years now and we still haven't done it. But there are companies like swag up when we were really deep in this research, I found this company swag up that literally puts a box together for you and they will distribute it and it will, it looks really fun. It's really well packaged and you can kind of scale up and down. What's in there, but it's good quality stuff. Nobody I repeat, nobody wants swag of like pens and stickers and like koozies. Nobody wants that anymore. Like the junk swag, if you're going to do this, you got to go quality hydroflasks is super big right now. Super big right now. But there's just, there's other ways to go about the swag game than just getting like the cheap stuff with candy. Like it's fine. But if I, if I were going to do that now, like, I'd go big.

Well, the, like that's such a two-fold too, because like you're sending people things for the company that make them feel like you're thinking about them. Like also then they're wearing it. They're proud to work for your company. And they're probably telling people like I got this or like taking a picture of it and like it's a double, it's a double good, that's a no lose there.

Yeah. Win, win, win, win, win everybody wins, good branding, good content. You can, you know, and that's the thing that we always think about in these moments is like one, it's the experience that we're giving the team into connect everybody and just give everybody else feel good. But you always think about how we're going to capture this in content. So that was one thing with Beth did that surprise. We recorded it and did everybody's like live feedback and then the cheers at the end and made content out of it. It's really hard to get culture posts right now when everybody's remotely, we've even thought about just sending a photographer to people's homes and getting some of that. But think about, you can capture this and leverage this for content because you're putting the effort in and you're probably spending something, get some marketing material out of it.

Yeah. It was going to say I didn't want to bring that up, but like, we are always like, Ooh, that could be con like then Kelsey and I were the content people we're always like, take a picture of that while you're there kind of thing. But like it's, it's positive employee engagement also. So it's, again, it's a win, win, win.

Yeah. I just think there's, like you said before, everybody's trying to, in the beginning of this, we were trying to create these like moments that happened online and they're still great and there's still a lot of love there and there's still a lot of energy there, but I think if you can take the end of this year, I mean, really we should all be throwing a party for surviving 2020 and like having a year and getting through that together. Try to make some like real life connection out of this. I think like the best route to go is by sending somebody, something, everybody loves getting packages in the mail, let's be honest. But like sending something in the mail so that everybody has something to open. And then connecting that to a moment, one of the ideas that I saw that I love.

But again, depending on your organization is throwing a virtual cocktail party. I saw that like some organizations just literally send out a cocktail kit, like containing a set of like different bar tools, whether they're branded or not branded different mixers. And I know Mod House Interiors has some really, really cool like cocktail stuff right now to send out. But obviously know that some people drink alcoholic drinks, some people don't, so they could be mixers and things that are good with or without alcohol, but then you basically have your team do the add-ins or give them a gift card for whatever beverages they want. And having them like, like I know Beth loves making cocktails. So this is something that she would be super excited to then do the tutorial on how to make this cocktail that she sent out and we'd probably call it to the Chatterkick something or whatever. And then we'd all literally make cocktails together. Like that would be really fun, but I think any way that you can create an experience in real life would be really, really cool.

Yeah. I think it's important to follow that up with like the stuff we talk about. Like all this stuff, it is great to like capture these moments, but you're not doing it for the, for the after photo. You're doing it to connect with your team because like your team isn't seeing you, unless they need it for a meeting, like, unless you were actively choosing to co-work with your coworkers on a video call, like you're not connecting with them in the same way. Even if you chat all the time, even like, it's just, it's not the same connective level. So like, this is kind of a reminder SOS to everybody. Like, don't forget to connect with the people that you don't talk to every day.

Right? Because I think one thing that has happened out of this and I've seen it from really businesses that I wouldn't expect is that people are giving more time off. And I think that that's amazing. And I think, you know, if you can give everybody an extra day around the holidays to go connect with their family, that's great. But we're talking about using and leveraging these moments to get your team to connect together. Everybody's going to need more time to just like unplug because they're constantly plugged in right now, but we're talking about focusing these ideas on ways that you're fusing relationships and creating opportunity and space for people to not talk about work at all, but to create these moments together. And it just.. I've said it a thousand times, but the way that you show up for your or your team is a way that they're going to show back up for you.

And so, like you just said, Bri, if you're only reaching out or you're only being reached out to during fire situations, that's probably the level of like, well, I guess they're there when I need them, but this is to like extend beyond that and say like, no, they're, they're there to support me. They're there like enhancing my life, creating better experiences for me and my family. So I would genuinely think beyond throwing a couple extra bucks at people. People love that don't get me wrong. But think beyond that, think beyond giving them time off and time away. This is time to connect and collect memories together.

I think a really fun way to do that. Also if we're still talking about it as a year end, obviously if you're listening to this in like March of next year, like still do this, but like, but like it's not quite as like, it's just different timelines is like there used to be this thing when you left, like, I worked at Coldstone in high school. And when you left Coldstone, there's like this ritual that we all went out to the Buffalo Wild Wings across the street, because this is 2011 and Coldstone and Buffalo Wild Wings are at their prime. And you went around the table and like told your favorite thing that happened, like with the person who was leaving, like during their time there, like you said, you went through all the funny memories like you and your team go through your funny memories from the last year. Even if like some of them were like, remember that awful thing that happened, we survived. But like, remember, and you're just going to have like a funny laugh about it and you're all on the RingCentral and no it's like you make sure that everybody's kind of like getting the conversation started and talking to everybody and like having a cocktail hour and talking about like, talking about some of those fun things and remembering like everything we went through in 2020 as a team,

Fo sho, and we lived, there's a million. Yeah. Think there's a million ideas creating some of these other ones on here, like creating a custom music playlist. Those are always fun to do, but I love we've gone through so many ideas in such a short period of time, but focus of this, creating connections together as a team share with us, like what you've done, like we want to add to our list, share what you've done, share what you would have changed. Some of the ideas that we've done in the past have been so much work, but so worth it to just see people's faces on creating those memories. And they're still things that we talk about today. Like I know if you're one of those people, Beth Trejo is one of those people that doesn't love games. I know that she's, that, that sounds weird saying it out loud.

Cause I know that it's not entirely true, but she's not going to be the first one who's like, Oh, sweet an escape room. Like that. Wasn't something that she loves to do. So you're going to have those people, but I know that to this day, the experience of the escape room and the experience of the scavenger hunt that we've done, like sending people all over the city, the experience of these things are the things that people are going to talk about forever. And I think right now you're like, you're putting these things into cement of like when, when the world got weird, this is how this organization showed up for me. Don't be the one to like black out and not do anything. And just say like, well, we're just going to ignore that this year happened. Lean into this with everything that you have spend more on your culture, create more time. I don't want to say to force happy hours, but force connections. Don't let your team just opt out of connecting and having these conversations. It's too important to skip it. Right? Any last knowledge you want to drop on people? No.

I want to steal everybody's ideas about what they do that we haven't thought of yet.

For sure. Yeah. We were willing to test any of these that you want to try. If you're like, Hey, let us know how this goes. We'll test it. Well, I guess we'll be the Guinea pigs with trying some new stuff, but I'm really, really excited to put some of these into play this year. We'll always post about them. I'm sure we'll continue to write blogs, share podcasts about them. Because like I said, some of these things that we've done went super well. Some of these things that we've done, I'd do completely different because they drug out way too long or were poorly executed. But the fact of the matter is like we're willing to try anything to bring us all together. And even if we're laughing at like, well that didn't go according to plan, like it's all, it's all good at the end. Yeah.

Remember your people. Remember to check in on them and remember to connect.

Thanks for the ideas, Bri, love this. We're going to try 15 of them.

inspiration, BusinessChatterkickNovember 24, 2020covid19, internal team