The HR team scheduled a mandatory virtual escape room for the engineering department. Cameras on, full participation required, Friday at 4 PM. The activity was supposed to build camaraderie—get people laughing together, solving puzzles, bonding across teams.
The feedback was brutal.
"That was the most awkward hour I've spent at this company." "Can we please never do this again?" "I would have rather just had that time back." "This is not how engineers bond."
The activity wasn't objectively bad. Escape rooms work well for some groups. But requiring participation, scheduling it during work hours that overlapped awkwardly with time zones, making it social-performance intensive, and choosing something that many engineers found cringe rather than fun—it backfired spectacularly.
Remote team building is hard because the activities that work naturally in offices don't translate to video calls. In an office, you build relationships through countless small interactions: grabbing coffee, eating lunch together, chatting while waiting for meetings to start, overhearing conversations. These moments happen without planning. They're low-pressure and low-stakes.
Remote work eliminates all of this. Every interaction must be scheduled. Every moment of connection requires deliberate effort. The informal relationship-building that happens naturally in person must be designed in distributed teams—and the design matters enormously.
At SmithSpektrum, I've worked with over 40 remote and distributed engineering teams on culture and retention[^1]. The ones that succeed at connection share certain patterns. The ones that struggle tend to make the same mistakes. Understanding both helps you build teams where engineers feel connected without feeling forced.
Why Team Building Still Matters
Connection isn't just nice to have. It affects retention, collaboration, and performance.
Isolated engineers are more likely to leave. When you don't feel connected to colleagues—when work is purely transactional—the switching costs of leaving feel lower. You're not leaving relationships; you're just leaving a job. Remote teams with weak social bonds see higher attrition.
Collaboration requires trust, and trust builds through relationship. Engineers who don't know each other default to formal, guarded interaction. Engineers who have relationships communicate more openly, give more direct feedback, and work through disagreements more constructively.
Mental health suffers in isolation. The pandemic made this visible, but it was always true. Humans need social connection, and for many engineers, work is a significant source of it. Remote work without deliberate connection investment creates loneliness.
The question isn't whether to invest in team building. The question is how to do it in ways that actually work—that build genuine connection without creating the awkwardness and resentment that badly executed activities produce.
What Doesn't Work
Certain patterns reliably fail with engineering teams.
Mandatory attendance makes activities feel like obligations rather than opportunities. The moment you require participation, you've changed the frame from "here's something fun we're offering" to "here's a work requirement that happens to involve fun." Engineers—particularly introverts—resent being required to socialize.
| Activity Type | Frequency | Time Investment | Engagement Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| Virtual coffee pairs | Weekly | 30 min | High (1:1 connection) |
| Show & tell / demos | Biweekly | 1 hour | High (learning + recognition) |
| Online games (optional) | Monthly | 1 hour | Medium (varies by person) |
| All-hands + breakouts | Weekly/Biweekly | 1 hour | Medium |
| In-person gatherings | Quarterly/Annually | 2-4 days | Very high (ROI justified) |
Large-group activities create performance pressure. A game that works in a group of four becomes awkward with thirty people. There's nowhere to hide, pressure to be entertaining, and the dynamic favors extroverts. Many engineers are uncomfortable in these settings.
After-hours events intrude on personal time. Scheduling team building outside work hours seems considerate—"we're not taking away from productive time"—but it actually says "your personal time is available for work purposes." For engineers with families, evening hobbies, or in unfavorable time zones, this is particularly burdensome.
Generic corporate activities feel inauthentic. The escape rooms, the trivia nights, the forced icebreakers—these feel like something HR found in a catalog rather than something designed for how engineers actually like to interact. The inauthenticity is palpable and counterproductive.
Video-mandatory social hours create performative exhaustion. Some companies have cameras-on policies for social events, which forces people to perform engagement for an extended period. Zoom fatigue is real; requiring cameras for team building adds fatigue to what should be energizing.
What Actually Works
The activities that build connection in engineering teams tend to share certain characteristics.
They're optional with genuine opt-in. People participate because they want to, not because they have to. This changes the dynamic completely—attendees are there voluntarily, which makes the interaction more authentic.
They're small-group rather than all-hands. Connection happens in groups of three to six people, not thirty. You can't have a real conversation with fifteen people on a video call. Small groups enable actual relationship-building.
They're built around shared interests. Bonding over something you actually care about creates genuine connection. A gaming session for engineers who like gaming, a book club for engineers who like reading, a running channel for engineers who run—these work because participants are genuinely engaged.
They accommodate different interaction styles. Introverts and extroverts need different things. Some engineers love video calls; others are drained by them. Offering variety—synchronous and asynchronous, high-energy and low-key—lets everyone find something that works for them.
They happen during work hours. Taking time during the workday for connection signals that the company values it. Expecting people to give personal time signals that it's not really valued enough to impact productivity.
Activities That Work
Random coffee or donut matching consistently rates highly. Automated tools pair people randomly for short one-on-one conversations—twenty to thirty minutes weekly or biweekly. It's low commitment, genuinely social without being performative, and builds connections across teams. Most engineers who participate find it valuable.
Coworking sessions work well for some engineers. Video on, muted, working in parallel with occasional check-ins. It mimics the ambient presence of an office without requiring constant interaction. Not everyone likes this, but those who do find it valuable for feeling less alone.
Interest-based channels create community around shared hobbies. A gaming channel where people organize multiplayer sessions. A book club with asynchronous discussion. A fitness channel where people share workout achievements. A music channel with playlist sharing. These are entirely self-selected—people who enjoy them participate; people who don't can ignore them.
Technical social activities work particularly well with engineers. Hackathons (low-stakes, team-based), lightning talks (five-minute presentations on any topic), architecture review clubs (discussing interesting designs), paper reading groups (technical papers with discussion). These are social but don't feel like "team building"—they feel like shared intellectual engagement.
Small-group experiences can work if they're genuinely optional and appropriately sized. A virtual escape room with four volunteers is different from a mandatory escape room with the whole department. Online games like Jackbox or Among Us work well for small groups who enjoy that kind of thing.
The In-Person Component
Even primarily remote teams benefit from occasional in-person gathering.
The relationship depth that in-person time enables is hard to replicate virtually. Shared meals, casual conversations, the full bandwidth of in-person interaction—these build trust and connection in ways that video calls cannot fully match.
Annual or semi-annual offsites are worth the investment for remote teams that can afford them. Three to five days together, mixing substantive work with social time, creates connections that sustain the rest of the year.
The offsite balance matters. All work and no social produces weaker relationships. All social and no substance feels like a waste. The best offsites include meaningful collaborative work—strategic planning, roadmap sessions, design discussions—alongside unstructured social time.
Avoid over-scheduling. People need downtime to connect naturally. If every moment is programmed, the spontaneous conversations that build relationships don't happen.
Make attendance possible for everyone. If some team members can't attend due to travel restrictions, visa issues, or personal circumstances, find ways to include them—or acknowledge that they're missing out and find alternative ways to maintain their connection.
Building Connection Systematically
Effective remote connection isn't just activities—it's building connection into how the team works day to day.
Daily practices build micro-connections. Standups that include a brief non-work check-in ("how's everyone doing?"). Celebration shout-outs in Slack. Casual channels where non-work conversation is encouraged. These small touches keep people connected without requiring scheduled events.
Weekly practices create rhythm. Random coffee matching provides regular one-on-ones. Optional end-of-week social time offers a chance to unwind together. Friday wins channels let people celebrate achievements.
Monthly practices provide larger gatherings. A team social activity, optional and varied. An all-hands that includes culture and celebration, not just business updates.
Quarterly practices create milestones. Larger gatherings, possibly in person. Celebrations of major achievements. New hire welcomes and tenure recognitions.
Manager Responsibilities
Managers have particular responsibilities for building connection on their teams.
Model the importance of connection by participating themselves. If the manager never joins social activities, the team reads that as "this isn't actually valued."
Encourage without mandating. "I hope you'll join us for the team lunch—it's really valuable for building relationships" works better than "attendance is expected."
Notice who's absent. If someone consistently doesn't participate in any social activities, check in privately. They might be struggling, or they might prefer different kinds of connection. Understanding helps you support them appropriately.
Protect time for connection. Don't fill every available hour with meetings. If the team has no unstructured time, they have no opportunity to connect casually.
Vary activity types. Some engineers love games; others hate them. Some love video calls; others prefer asynchronous. Offering variety ensures everyone has something that works for them.
Measuring What Works
You can't optimize what you don't measure.
Participation rates tell you whether activities are valued. If attendance consistently drops, something's wrong with what you're offering.
Survey feedback goes deeper. "I feel connected to my colleagues" on engagement surveys tells you whether your efforts are working. "What team building activities would you enjoy?" tells you what to try.
Retention patterns matter. If exit interviews consistently cite isolation or lack of connection, your team building isn't working.
Cross-team collaboration indicates whether connection is translating to work effectiveness. Are people reaching out across team boundaries? Are relationships forming beyond immediate collaborators?
The engineering team that hated the mandatory escape room? They asked their engineers what they'd actually enjoy.
The answers were simple: small-group coffee chats where they could actually get to know one person at a time. Optional gaming sessions for those who enjoyed games. And one in-person offsite per year where they could build real relationships.
They implemented those instead. Participation in social activities doubled. Engineers started reaching out across teams without prompting. Survey scores on "I feel connected to my team" improved 30%.
The lesson was clear: forced fun doesn't work. But genuine connection, offered in ways that respect how engineers actually like to interact, makes all the difference.
References
[^1]: SmithSpektrum remote work advisory, team building research, 2021-2026. [^2]: GitLab Handbook, "Building Informal Communication." [^3]: Buffer, "State of Remote Work," 2025. [^4]: Harvard Business Review, "Virtual Team Bonding," 2024.
Building connection in your remote engineering team? Contact SmithSpektrum for remote work strategy.
Author: Irvan Smith, Founder & Managing Director at SmithSpektrum