Virtual breaktime tea: 6 easy ideas for your team to connect remotely

If the Covid 19 Pandemic taught us anything, it is that almost everything can be done virtually. Whether it’s meetings or seminars or, in this case, breaktime tea, the virtual world has made room for it.

In case you’re wondering what a break time tea is, it is really not far-fetched. During long meetings and seminars, employers sometimes allow remote employees to have occasional tea breaks just to ease off and refresh. 

A virtual breaktime tea simply provides remote employees the avenue to connect, rejuvenate and strengthen team spirit even while working from home. While a standard time limit may be ten to fifteen minutes, there’s really no barrier to the time for employee engagement.

How important is virtual breaktime tea?

Served as a virtual team building

The goal of every firm or organization is to help all employees stay connected during the lockdown. This is only possible where there is proper synergy and teamwork among remote employees. This is where the virtual breaktime tea comes in. 

The virtual breaktime tea helps to create sessions that enable proper teamwork and boost up collaboration as well. Team building is as essential as manufacturing is to the firm. 

Increased engagement

Besides building team spirit, a virtual breaktime tea also helps increase engagement, especially during a very long and exhausting meeting. When it is outside of the traditional office space, it can be more mentally draining and tasking. 

Working from home can get boring sometimes and this affects your contribution to the meetings as well. Giving your remote workers a virtual tea break where they can bond, relax, and give their opinions unhindered becomes a win-win situation for both parties. Who doesn’t like a win-win situation?

Increased productivity

A rejuvenated mind is necessary for maximum engagement during work hours and meetings. When employees are weary and tired, their productivity level drops to almost zero percent. 

Breaktime tea is necessary as it refreshes the remote employees’ minds and replenishes their energy. It helps them stay active and in the mood to work! When employees are well relaxed and rejuvenated, they will come back with the highest level of motivation.

Encourages employees welfare

Furthermore, most companies have various welfare packages. From Christmas bonuses to fat overtime envelopes, you name it. This goes to show that your employees are an essential part of your organization or business. Especially during the pandemic, employee wellbeing should be of topmost priority.

Having virtual breaktime tea, makes them feel “seen” and taken care of even when there is not necessarily a meeting. Whether all employees can join your break time tea event or not, they still get a sense of appreciation and belonging with this idea sourced from the HR department.   

A handful of virtual breaktime tea ideas

If this is all new to you and you’re oblivious as to where to start from, you should check these ideas out:

1. Tea V Coffee

What is a virtual tea break without tea? With this concept, we conduct a 15-30 minute event via video call and have a skilled host to engage with participants. Before the event, a kit containing four samples, two samples of tea and two samples of coffee, is sent to participants. 

On that day, everybody gets to taste the tea and coffee and share their thoughts while sipping away! It is easy, stress-free, and convenient. If you haven’t hosted a virtual tea break before, you should try this out for a start.

2. Pub Trivia

When meetings get too long and exhausting and start to wear people out, you may want to consider this option. In Pub trivia, you can compete individually or in teams consisting of a few persons. It is relaxing and, at the same time, very engaging.

Here at some starter questions for you:

• Q. Who sang, “Marry you?”
  A. Bruno Mars
• Q. Other than water, what is the most consumed beverage? 
  A. Tea.
• Q. What is the current most-watched series on Netflix?
  A. Squid game
• Q. What is the most visited country in the world?
  A. France.

You should never go wrong with pub trivia. It almost always works!

3. Guided meditation 

With so many presentations and counter opinions during meetings, it is customary to be overwhelmed sometimes. So while conducting a virtual breaktime tea, you should consider taking your employees through a guided meditation process.

It involves embracing some moments of silence and just breathing. It helps your mind to be settled and also regains your sanity. This method is also very therapeutic.

4. Workouts

While people mostly go for talking as a team-building method, you can use your break to engage everybody in mild workouts. Simple procedures like burpees, jumping jacks, and a host of others could get your heart rate up and refill your positive energy. You can also have them do these workouts in teams or groups and improve team-building that way too.

5. Mini dance party

A virtual breaktime does a lot, and one of it is energizing. You can ask your workers to dance some simple movements to a particular song. While some of them who have gist may jump right at it, a few others may seem hesitant. Regardless of that, the music can wake up the sleepy heads and energize them more than coffee ever could. 

6. Snacking

Snacks should be called the eight wonders of the world. They could turn a not-so-good day into a super bright one. To attract your employees' concentration, you should take care of their stomachs as well as their minds.

After a long virtual meeting or brainstorming session, you should allow everyone to have snacks and drinks. Even better, the HR team can schedule snack delivery to their doors, and everyone can enjoy it together.  

While these are just a few ideas, you can always allow yourself to think and come up with the most exciting and creative ideas.

Tips to conduct a virtual breaktime tea

First things first, it’s really not that hard. It’s as easy as going on a coffee break, only that this time you’re going with other remote workers, and it’s a virtual activity. 

Here are a few tips that would answer almost all your questions about virtual breaktime tea.

1. Time: Having this virtual break about two times a week is a fair call. This way, they don’t get too used to it and still anticipate it whenever it happens. After work or during lunch would be the ideal time for it!

2. Which department should host it: Considering that there are many departments in every organization, it is only ideal that the Human Resources department handles this virtual breaktime. Who knows, maybe the HR era might just create an amazing connection and spark things up from there.

3. Don’t spend too much time on it, it’s recommended to keep the virtual breaktime tea short and sweet. The ideal duration should range from 15 to 30 minutes, which is fair enough for a break between hard-working days.

4. Draw people’s attention by an announcement on your company news dashboard in advance with small gifts as incentives to attend the virtual breaktime tea event. Let them join voluntarily without any force.   

5. Take advantage of available features from video meeting apps to make your virtual break more engaging. For example, you can separate participants into breakout rooms or create some polls to interact with the team. You might not want anyone left behind during this interesting event!

6. Feedbacks and reviews are essentials to the HR team and the organization as a whole.  The organizers will want to collect feedback from participants and make some improvements in the next event. So don’t forget to ask for feedback at the end!