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Ways to connect and socialise with work colleagues during your lunch hour

20 May 2020

laura

If you saw our recent Coronavirus update post you will have seen that we have no plans for our staff to return to the office anytime soon. We were a fairly social team with lunchtimes spent at the local pool hall or playing Super Smash Bros in the break room. Working from home, whilst perfectly practical, does take away the networking element of our days.

I am sure that I am not the only one who has all of a sudden found a new social life around virtual activities. In fact, I am sure I am spending more time with friends and family now than I ever did before. Using my experience over the last few months, I have put together a list of some of the top ways that you can connect and socialise with your work colleagues during your lunch break.

Online games

I have a new found love for the Jackbox games. These fun party games available through Steam allow groups to come together online and play using their phones as their controllers. Most of the games are limited to a maximum of 8 players and take about 20 minutes, so great for small teams to play at lunch. The Jackbox games are not new and people have been playing them online for a long time so they have great security features (some of them even have family-friendly modes so you can play with your kids). The games are not free but the party packs make for a great investment.

Bingo – great for larger teams

Every Wednesday night sees me host a game of bingo for between 60 and 80 players. With small prizes up for grabs, this is a great midweek activity with two games taking about 45 minutes. You can get virtual bingo cards from myfreebingocards.com where the first 30 cards are free. You can even brand them, change the colour and choose between words and numbers. The great thing about this site is that players can use their devices to mark the cards and you can even use the site to generate the bingo calls and check the cards to see if they have won. No bingo balls needed.

Escape Rooms

Every Friday night I spend the evening with a few select friends trying different virtual escape rooms. Some of them require you to share your screen whilst others sync up what you all see on your own devices. These have been lots of fun and as with most real-life escape rooms they should take just under an hour. A few that I recommend would be Bewilder Box Sector X The B.R.U.C.E project and Panic Room Online. The Bewilder box game is only available for 24 hours after activation but the panic room games can be played as many times as you want.

Quiz

There are lots of different ways to host your own quiz but using a site like MyQuiz.org allows you to create your own quiz and have the participants submit their answers online.

Have you taken part in any other fun online activities that you can play with colleagues in your lunch break?

laura

As part of the Customer Experience team, Laura ensures that all of our customers get the highest quality of service. You will find her looking after all of our social media channels. Laura has been blogging since 2010 and is an avid WordPress user.