23 Epic Virtual Happy Hour Activities
23 Virtual Happy Hour Activities
Now that you have all the tips and tricks of how to throw the most epic virtual happy hour , here are some activities to throw in and spice it up! Not only will you get to know your coworkers better and bond with them, but it will help to liven up an otherwise dull quarantine Tuesday.
1.Virtual Escape Room
Let’s take it back to the OG team bonding event: escape rooms. After all, what better way to get to know your team then by locking yourself in a room with them; even if it is just a virtual one? Offsite offers a Virtual Escape Room package, complete with team bonding and a trip to the mountains! Explore Treasure Mountain virtual escape room.
2. Lip Sync Karaoke
Karaoke is one of the most requested activities on our retreats. So we’re bringing it to your team virtually. Each team picks a song and creates a music video!
“Mat and his team did a great job bringing our remote company together in one place!”
3. Psych
After entering all the players names Pysch will come up with customized questions. Like “what would Jerry’s first words be after awakening from the dead” or “How would Karen survive the zombie apocalypse?” Each player will then write a witty response and at the end of the round everyone votes who had the best answer. Points are rewarded by ranking. The goal is to have the most amount of points at the end of the game.
4. Cooking Show
If there’s anything quarantine has done, it’s help to awaken everyone’s inner Iron Chef. Take advantage of this and turn your happy hour into a cooking show. Designate someone to run the meeting and pick a recipe. They’ll be the “chef” responsible for teaching everyone to cook. You can even designate multiple people for multiple dishes, just make sure not to over complicate it. Email out the ingredients so everyone can stock up prior. If you really want to embrace the happy hour theme, stick to cocktail recipes!
5. Most Likely To
Remember high school superlatives? You know the ones who denoted who had the best style or who was most likely to becoming president; let’s bring those back. At your next virtual happy hour, denote everyone their own superlative. Maybe Brian’s Most Likely to Steal Food out of the Communal Fridge or Susan’s constantly rocking a runway outfit despite the athleisure attire everyone adopted around the 5th zoom meeting.
6. Majority/Minority
What’s better: Chocolate of Vanilla? Coke or Pepsi? Morning or Night? Find out the answers to these much-debated questions with a game of Majority/Minority. Take turns posing questions and see what side your coworkers fall on. If you want to up the stakes, those who land on the minority side have to drink, a sip of beer or a shot, interrupt at your own risk.
7. The Useless Talent Show
Need an excuse to show off how you can twitch your ears up in down or rap every word of your favorite Kanye West song? We got you! This useless talent show is the perfect way to get to know you coworkers better and get a good laugh. It’s like the nephew’s talent show your forced to attend every year except completely talentless, well at least the talent is debatable. During their time everyone will have a chance to show off a completely random and useless talent, like balancing a book on their head. Decide who deserves the Useless Talent Show certificate with an anonymous poll. While the talent level may be debatable, one things for sure, you’ll know your coworkers a lot better by the end of it!
8. Where I’m From
Want to get to know your employees better? Let’s start by finding out about where they’re from. Each player will think up three unique quirks about where they’re from and everyone takes turns guessing where it is. If your team already knows where everyone is from you can turn it in to imaginary hide and seek. Instead of guessing where the person is from, you’ll guess where they are “hiding” based on their clues.
9. The Ruined Paradise Game
Start by diving players into two teams: The Paradise team and the Ruined team. Each person will go around adding sentences to the story, alternating between the teams. The Paradise team is responsible for jazzing up the story with positives, while the Ruined team has to make the story take a dark turn with negatives. Once the story is complete a judge will determine whether the Paradise is ruined or not.
10. Never Have I Ever: Quarantine Edition
With quarantine forcing us to slow down, you might have a greater appreciation for the simple things, like those middle school sleepovers at Tiffany’s, the ones complete with face masks and countless rounds of Never Have I Ever. Turn it into a fun happy hour by making this classic sleepover game quarantine themed. Watch as hands rise to “Never Have I Ever spent three days in the same sweatpants” or “put on athletic wear only to opt for trying a new baking recipe.”
11. Morning Meditation
Looking to find your inner Zen? Like the cooking show, morning meditation works best if you designate a specific person to lead it, even if you opt to follow a YouTube video. You can choose to use the meditation as an opener for your morning meeting, or as the whole meeting itself, whichever works best for the flow of your company.
12. Jukebox
It’s like karaoke, but better. Take turns going around, making sure everyone has a song in their head. When it’s your turn you’ll hum/sing part of the song as your coworkers try to guess the artist and song name. Not only will you walk out with a killer playlist, but a good laugh too. The best part? It doesn’t matter if your voice resembles a rabid cat, it’ll just make the song harder to guess and up the stakes!
13. Horror Happy Hour
Remember those scavenger hunts that filled your childhood summers, well it’s like that but scarier. *insert ghost sounds*. At the beginning of your virtual happy hour set a timer, 5-10 minutes should do. By the end of the time everyone should come back with an object and tell a scary story to go with it. It can be that great aunt’s old teapot that always seems to be in a different place than you left it or a picture from that emo phase you went through in high school, trust me it’s plenty scary.
14. Scavenger Hunt
If you’re the type to get spooked when the latest thriller trailer comes on, maybe the Horror Happy Hour isn’t for you, but that doesn’t mean you have to rule out all scavenger hunts. Instead focus on grabbing as many non-haunted items as you can before the 5-minute timer goes off. At the end you’ll have another 5-minutes to build a tower. Tallest tower wins! Better yet, join in Offsite’s own virtual Not Your Granny’s Scavenger Hunt! In this high-energy happy hour activity coworkers duck, dive, dodge and dash to collect the clues with your team while racing against teams, and the clock.
15. Hawaiian Laua
We’re all missing those trips that got cancelled because of COVID. Spend your next virtual happy hour on a tropical getaway. Encourage your employees to wear their favorite Hawaiian shirt, switch their zoom background to a far-away beach, and if their really feeling it, stick an umbrella in their drink.
16. Sneak It In!
Divide your coworkers into groups. It’s best to send this groups in the happy hour invitation that way the groups can meet and decide their word ahead of time. The zoom meeting will resume like normal, talk of that show you binged in one day or how you’ve resorted to learning tic tok dances just to keep your kids entertained; only each team will have to sneak their word into the conversation without the other teams guessing. How many times can you bring up potatoes in a conversation? I guess you’ll just have to find out.
17. GIF Game
If your ideal game night consists of a big glass of wine and Cards Against Humanity, this is the perfect game for you. The game is divided into rounds; each round with a topic like “My perfect Sunday___” or “Quarantine got me like___” . The players will then have 2 minutes to find a GIF that they think best matches the topic. Like cards against humanity, each round will have a new judge in charge of crowning the winners.
18. Identity Thief
Let’s take ‘em back to the nineties with this modernized classic Guess Who. Using an online secret Santa generator, or an old fashion ball cap and paper scraps, each coworker will be assigned another coworker. It’s best to do this a day before your virtual happy hour so they have time to prepare. Along with their “new” identities, players will also receive a series of questions that have been answered by the coworker they’ll be impersonating. During happy hour, players will use costumes and their answers to help others guess whose identity they’ve stolen.
19. Company Trivia
Missing weekly bar trivia? Bring it to your happy hour! Sure, you can stick to your traditional jeopardy topics like Geography and Current Affairs or you can personalize to your company. Go serious with the company mission statement or make it fun by asking questions like “who was drunk Santa at our holiday party?”
20. Company Connections Machine
Rube Goldberg Machines are all the rage on TikTok right now. We’re building machines and connecting coworkers around the country and even the world. Build a company-wide Virtual Rube Goldberg Machine.
21. Workspace Show & Tell
A throw-back to one of the all-time best shows, MTV CRIBS. Time to show-off those at-home workspaces. Run this event as a twist on Trivia and we will work with your team to showcase videos of some of your employees at-home workspaces.
22. Bingo
If you want your virtual happy hour activity to feature low-energy team building, bingo is the perfect solution! Continue your happy hour as you have in the past, but be on the lookout for bingo prompts to cross off, like the family member that walks in the background or the dog that barks.
23. Thumper
Is your company a large corporation? We have the perfect happy hour game for you! As part of the Happy Hour Finale in Offsite’s virtual retreat package, this team bonding game can include up to 500-people! After getting to know each other better round the whole experience out with keynote from leadership. And that my friends, is how you have an epic virtual retreat!
Let us know in the comments what your favorite virtual happy hour activity was!