Remote Team-Building With Pies and Pavlovas
With team members on different continents and in different time zones, fostering a work community can be a challenge. So at SiteCare, we're getting creative with our team-building activities.
by Drew Barton
The thousands of miles that separate our staff can impede most team-building exercises. After-work drinks, escape rooms, and trust falls aren’t possible with our global team spread across four continents.
This February, we set out to replicate one of my favorite shows, The Great British Bake-Off (GBB), a competition that pits home-bakers against each other in a series of baking challenges. The winner claims the title of Britain’s Top Amateur Baker. So, our team members were presented with a similar challenge.
Each team member had a chance to assign an item from a predetermined list to another team member to bake. And in exchange for this kindness, they could return the favor by assigning a must-have ingredient in the baked item. For example, we saw cookies with peppermint, baklava with figs, a banana tart with chocolate chips, scones with orange zest, and many more delicious concoctions.
Using Bonusly, our team’s reward system, the prizes would be as follows: the winner would receive $150 in Bonusly, the second place $100, and the third place would receive $50. As an added bonus, each team member’s charitable organization would receive a matching donation. Read more about how our charitable contribution program works here.
Throughout the challenge, each team member would post pictures or videos of their baked production to help ensure that the required ingredient was included. Submitting the creations online encouraged a good degree of interaction and creativity and included recipe blogs, step-by-step photos, and how-to videos.
Team members could then vote on a 10-point scale as to the quality of the presentation and the overall product. Sadly, we were unable to vote on the all-important factor of taste due to, well, geography.
Here are the top contenders:
As our team’s votes were tallied, it was clear that Olivia’s video and fruit-cutting skills earned her top place. She won $150 in Bonusly, and her charitable organization, PAWS of Mauritius – which protects animal welfare – will receive a matching $150 donation from SiteCare. Courtney Herda won second place. And it was an 8-way tie for third place as everyone, including our charitable organizations, was a winner. Check out the winning video below.
We baked some tasty treats, had great laughs (often at our own expense), and supported our charitable interests worldwide. The SiteCare Bake-Off was a success by all accounts. One team member even asked, “Can we do this again next month?”
What do you think of the results? Do you have any creative global team-building ideas? Let us know in the comments below.
