How to make video calls fun

It was our favorite moment of the week before corona brought the whole society to a standstill: the Friday afternoon drinks. Nice to close the place around five and go over the latest gossip with your colleagues while enjoying a nice glass of wine or beer. Now we are all working from home and we miss those colleagues more than we thought. Fortunately, there are various platforms that allow you to video call with a group of people to catch up.

Doing something
You and your colleagues probably haven't really seen each other for a while, and it's just a bit different on Zoom than in real life. Do you have a fairly casual workplace? Then it might be fun to do something to avoid awkwardness. You could play bingo, 30 Seconds, or Werewolves, for example. Everyone can traditionally grab a glass of wine and some snacks to make the drinks complete. If you really want to go all out, you can even play an online escape room. Fun if you had actually planned your team outing in these months.

Not too serious
More and more is possible on the now booming online platforms, and you can have fun with that during your online drinks. On Zoom, for example, you can change your background. So you can pretend you are in Paris. Agree with your colleagues that they all set a city (any city in the world) as their background. You will then guess which city your colleagues ‘are’ in. Guaranteed funny conversations.

Handy tips
How many people are you going to have online drinks with? If it's a large group, there can be a lot of sounds overlapping, causing noise. This is not pleasant, and you can't hear each other very well. The solution? The mute button. Agree that when you are not speaking, you have your mute on so that no sound comes from you. When you do speak, take it off mute. This way, you can hear each other better.

Normally, you probably have some music playing in the background, but that's not very handy during video calls. The music causes noise. Also, make sure you have done your shopping in advance and your drinks are cold. With a snack and a drink, you get into the drinks atmosphere and can have a good laugh like old times.

And then we run back to the office and the terrace together as soon as we can.

Text: VrouwenZaken.com