There’s no way around it: regardless of the specific market or sector, practically every kind of company has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic happening in the past two years. Most of us had to scale back our office presence, cut back on seeing our coworkers in real life, and switch to a completely remote setup altogether, drastically changing how we work and our everyday lives.
Startups and small teams are arguably the types of groups most affected by the lack of personal interaction: as a tight-knit band of people working towards a common, but often hard to achieve goal, not becoming completely disconnected from one another is key in times of lock down. Onboarding remote people can also be hard for teams with previously close in-life working relationships, and can pose many unseen difficulties, given the reduced amount of social interactions altogether.
So, what’s one activity that you could do to provide a creative outlet for people that also gets them together and have some fun? While in-person team events are out of the question, with the right online activity, people can still get their teams together for a little bit of bonding. This can be something one-off, like taking part in an online escape room, but it can also be something recurring that becomes a part of the company’s culture. We at Symflower went with Meme of the Month.
What is Meme of the Month?
The premise is simple: every month, team members submit memes they come up with, and at the end of the month, a competition (and an awards show) is held, during which a winner is chosen. There are, of course, no constraints on format, topic, or anything of the sorts, and anyone can submit any kind of meme, from the oldest Orly owls to the newest “TikTok” memes. Anyone can submit any number of memes, all they have to make sure is that it is before the deadline specified, so the awards show can be set up in advance.
Here are some examples of what it looks like for us — with some never-before seen, inside joke memes added.
Why is Meme of the Month a good team activity?
Bonding over shared experiences is always a great way to bring a team together, and potentially making fun of bad or problematic ones can be even better. Whether it’s an unfortunate accident that happened during the development of your new product, a weird follower on Twitter who’s posting unprompted pictures of farm animals to your threads, or a typo that haunts your marketing people, it’s all fair game.
What’s more, the crafty startups out there can have their cake, and eat it too: while many of the memes are going to be inside jokes for the company at hand, a portion of them usually relate to the general market or space the company is working in, and so can be used for other activities. Need something fun to post on social media? You’ve got memes. Need to introduce a light-hearted section in your weekly newsletter? You’ve got memes.
Of course, this is only one of the many great online team activities startups can come up with, and we’re curious about you as well: what are some activities that you do with your team? Do you have anything that came to be during COVID-19, and you’ll definitely keep doing it once you’re back at the office? Anything that has become a regular, recurring part of your company culture? Let us know in the comments on our Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn , and subscribe to our newsletter if you want to read more articles like this!