The best way to bring a remote team together for team building is to host a retreat for your remote team.

Offsite retreats are more effective than forced team bonding over virtual networks and productivity platforms. Retreats offer space to create a cooperative environment, motivate the remote team members, and align on company goals.

What should a retreat for a fully remote team look like? Remote workers often don’t know each other before the retreat. Likewise, remote employees tend to be introverts.

They usually don’t know much about each other outside the professional context.

As a result, retreats for remote teams need different activities than retreats for coworkers sharing an office every day. Here’s what Surf Office’s experience hosting retreats for remote teams has taught us.

Best remote team-building activities

Surf Office has lots of experience organizing activities for partly and fully remote companies, like Invision, Close.io, Mynd, and Mattermost.

Samantha, our in-house retreat planning expert, says the best way to plan is to start small. “You shouldn’t organize a big team-building activity as the first activity, especially for a remote team,” says Samantha.

“Surfing lessons, for example, aren’t a great way to break the ice when no one knows each other. We recommend getting there with smaller steps that don’t put too much pressure on new coworkers.”

Instead, start with some workshops or icebreaker games that can help remote colleagues get to know each other better. Here are some of the ones that have worked on our retreats.

1. Go for a hike or walk together

A good way to kick off the retreat is to go on a hike or walk together. Wander in nature or explore the city with or without a destination in mind.

It may be that you want to reach the top of a mountain together, or just head in the general direction of an ice cream shop.

This is an effective approach for remote workers because groups naturally interact and start to talk amongst themselves. Someone who is not in the mood to talk can walk faster or lag behind and join the group later.

Plus, you’re working toward a common goal.