Non-Work Activities That Actually Drive Team Engagement

Non-work activities drive team engagement because they give people something that tickets and targets can’t: a reason to like each other. A team that only talks about work will run out of goodwill the first time work gets hard, and in 2020 work got hard for everybody at once.

After the cuts at AudienceView I described in reducing a support team by 60%, the smaller team was spread across Toronto, New York, San Francisco and Las Vegas, and every one of us was at home. The usual ways a team bonds, lunch, a coffee, the walk to a meeting, had gone. I had to decide whether to try to replace them or treat them as a luxury. I came down firmly on the first side, and I’d do it again.

Here’s how I think about it, and what I’d try with any distributed support team.

Why do non-work activities matter for engagement?

Because engagement runs on relationships, and relationships are built from the parts of people’s lives that aren’t about the job. The Buffer report I’ve cited before found communication, collaboration and loneliness at the top of remote workers’ struggles. Loneliness isn’t fixed by a better ticketing tool. It’s fixed by people who know each other well enough to ask how the weekend went and mean it.

There’s a practical payoff as well. A team that knows each other asks for help sooner. In a support operation, that shows up directly in your numbers: fewer stuck tickets, faster escalations, less duplicated effort. People are much more willing to say “I don’t know how to handle this” to someone they trust. Trust is built in the ten minutes that aren’t about work.

It matters even more after a reduction. The people who remain have lost colleagues, and they’re holding a lot of unspoken feeling. A shared moment that isn’t about the business gives that feeling somewhere to go. I’d argue it’s part of the work of rebuilding a team after cuts, not an extra on top of it.

What kinds of activities actually work?

The ones that are low-pressure, optional and about something other than the job. A quiz, a shared playlist, a photo thread of home workspaces or pets, a book or film swap, a short virtual coffee with no agenda. Small and regular beats big and rare. A fifteen-minute call every Friday where nobody’s allowed to talk about the queue does more than an elaborate event once a quarter.

Let the team choose. A manager picking activities is guessing, and a distributed team has people in different time zones, with different home lives and different tastes. Ask what people would enjoy, try a few things and drop what doesn’t work. If nobody turns up to the trivia night, the answer isn’t to make trivia compulsory. It’s to try something else.

Make it inclusive. Not everyone wants to be on camera in the evening, and some people are caring for children or relatives during those hours. Offer a mix: something live, something people can join asynchronously, and something that takes a minute in a chat channel. The aim is for everybody to have a way in, including the quiet ones. They’re usually the ones who most need it.

How do you keep it from feeling forced?

By taking part honestly and not turning it into a performance. Forced fun is worse than none, because people can see it’s an attempt at morale management. Join in as a member of the group, share something real about your own week and don’t use the time to slip in announcements. If the manager is the only one talking, you’ve held a meeting and called it a social.

Keep it genuinely optional, and don’t track attendance. The moment participation becomes a measure, it stops being a gift. Some people will skip most sessions and still feel connected, and others will come to every one. Both are fine. What matters is that the door is open and nobody’s judged for how they use it.

And be honest about the timing. Don’t schedule a cheerful quiz on the afternoon after bad news without acknowledging the bad news. Read the room. Sometimes the right social activity is a quiet, unstructured call where people can say how they actually feel. A team that’s been through a reduction doesn’t need cheerfulness. It needs company.

Can you measure whether it’s working?

Not precisely, and you shouldn’t try to. A few things are worth watching. Do people help each other without being asked? Do they raise problems early? Do the one-to-ones get more open over time? The Gallup guidance I mentioned earlier found remote workers were three times more likely to be engaged with regular feedback from their manager, and the social side works the same way: frequent, small, real contact beats occasional big gestures.

You can look at the harder numbers too, loosely. Attrition, sick days, quality scores and first-contact resolution all move with engagement, slowly. If you want to track it properly, choose the measures from the team’s side of the table, as I argued in choosing the right KPI, and watch for changes in the trend, not a single figure. If first call resolution is one of your measures, how you measure it matters as much as the number.

Be patient. A team doesn’t become closer in a week. What you’re building is a habit, and the return shows up months later, usually in a crisis, when someone picks up the phone to a colleague without being asked.

What about cultures and time zones?

A distributed team has more differences to respect than a single office does. Holidays differ, quiet hours differ and so do ideas about what’s appropriate to share. A team that spans Toronto, New York, San Francisco and Las Vegas has only a few hours in the day when everyone is awake and working, so protect them for work and do social activities at times that suit the widest group. Rotate the time if one region keeps losing out.

Pay attention to who’s missing from the conversation. Remote teams develop a core of regulars and a fringe, and the fringe tends to be the newest people and those in the least convenient time zones. If you notice someone never joins, ask them privately what would make it work for them. The answer is rarely lack of interest. It’s usually a clash with something in their day, or a sense that the group already has its own jokes.

Finally, let the team own it. The best social habits I’ve seen were started by someone on the team and kept alive by the group, with the manager as one participant among many. If you’re the only person organising it, you’re running an event. If someone else picks it up, you have a culture.

Keep the cost low as well. None of this needs a budget. A shared document of recommendations, a standing video call, a channel for photos and a few minutes at the start of a meeting for people to share something from their week do the job. The investment is attention, and attention is the one resource a manager can always find some of.

What should a manager avoid?

Treating it as a substitute for the basics. A quiz night doesn’t make up for unclear priorities, an unmanageable workload or unfair treatment. If the work is broken, no amount of social activity will repair it, and people notice when a manager reaches for games to avoid a harder conversation. Fix the work first, and let the social side support it.

Avoid anything that makes people share more than they want to. Keep topics light and choices open. And don’t assume what people enjoy from their role or background. Ask. Guessing wrong is cheap to fix if you ask early.

For a wider look at remote team practices, my earlier piece on managing remote support staff covers the working rhythm that these activities sit on top of. Get that right first. The rest is what makes people want to stay.

It’s worth saying something about leaders taking part. A manager who joins in with a bit of self-deprecating humour, shares something about their own life and lets the team see them as a person does more for trust than a stack of policies. You don’t have to perform, and you shouldn’t. A small amount of honest openness from the person in charge gives everyone else permission to do the same.

And revisit what you’re doing every couple of months. What worked in April may feel tired by July. Ask the team what they’d keep, change or drop, and act on it. A social habit that’s reviewed stays alive, and one that’s left alone becomes another meeting people feel obliged to attend.

People remember how a team made them feel long after they’ve forgotten the ticket numbers.