In a society that is heavily reliant on technology, people skills can often suffer. We know how to communicate on social media and via text, but we don’t always know how to communicate face-to-face. When the nation seemed to go fully virtual almost overnight, it left a lot of businesses and organizations confused on how to continue to drive employee participation and rapport like we were used to. If you’re still operating virtually, here are some great tips to drive participation from your employees and teams while having fun.

Schedule a Coffee Break

Days can easily get filled up with meetings when it comes to working virtually, so make an effort to make some of those fun for your team. Scheduling a coffee break is a great way for everyone to have time to step away from their computers to prepare their coffee and then hop on a video call to hang out with the rest of the team. Every time you schedule a coffee break meeting, pick a topic for everyone to share something on. Perhaps it’s their favorite way to prepare coffee or a pet show and tell. This is also a great way for the entire team to bond and get to know each other more.

Home Office Tours

Many employees found themselves having to create an office space in a home that didn’t necessarily have the space for one. And while it was easy to spend a week or two on the couch, bed, or maybe even kitchen counter, eventually, many of us began looking for some long-term solutions. Some people may still be looking for ways to refine their office space. If your employees feel comfortable, have them take turns sharing pictures or videos of their home office and tips they have for being efficient on the clock would be a great way to drive participation. You can do this via email, Slack, or other internal communication tools.

Drive Discussions

Something that became apparent early on is that the default engagement level for video conferencing was silence. And while that might have felt normal during in-person meetings, it can feel a bit awkward virtually. One great way to drive engagement during virtual meetings is to present topics in a way that gets the audience to discuss opposing views. Try raising two opposing views that challenge each other and get people to think—leading people to have a healthy discussion around the best option for the overall team or organization.

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Whether you implement some of these or none of these ideas, if there is one takeaway from this article, it’s to keep things fun for everyone!