Work-from-home Innovation (Sec): Virtual Unit Retreat & Treasure Hunt

Written by Elaine Sng

1. What was the session about?

On 22 May 2020, the Secondary unit held its first-ever online unit retreat. One of the activities was a virtual treasure hunt organised by Making Teams, a company that offers corporate team-building services.

2. What tools and platforms were used?

Zoom served as our video conferencing platform. Before the treasure hunt commenced, our hosts from Making Teams conducted some icebreaker activities to help us practise collaborating in a virtual environment.

To warm up for the treasure hunt, officers were tasked to complete these famous logos using Zoom's annotation tool.

The web-based platform Articulate was used to conduct the treasure hunt. Officers were split into three teams, and each team used the platform to access a virtual narrative of Italian explorer Marco Polo's travels, which was interspersed with treasure hunting and various games and challenges.

A screenshot of Articulate, depicting a narrative of Marco Polo's journeys.

Interactive Google maps and Google Expeditions were embedded into the platform, allowing officers to experience and explore the cities that Marco Polo traversed, as well as 'visit' specific locations to look for treasure and other artefacts.

One activity the teams had to complete was naming these edible items in languages belonging to the various cities that Marco Polo had visited.

3. What were some observations?

While planning the retreat, we discovered that vendors offering virtual team-bonding programmes and activities have long been catering to the needs of remote companies with employees scattered all over the world. Some of these vendors have developed innovative and sophisticated programmes. 

For example, one vendor offers mini-challenges which can be performed at any time within a particular week by small groups. The scores are aggregated and shown on a leaderboard, which is an app that participants can download. This encourages people to take breaks from work, and get together for some fun and competitive buzz. 

We also came across companies that organise virtual escape rooms, treasure hunts, amazing races, and puzzles.

Our vendor was pretty ambitious, introducing multiple platforms at one go. Hence, collaboration sometimes felt like a bit of a juggling act, as we were required to toggle between multiple platforms while having to communicate clearly with our teammates at the same time. Nevertheless, it was an interesting challenge, which everyone gamely took on.

4. What were the outcomes of this session?

After not having met face-to-face in a long time, this virtual treasure hunt (and the unit retreat as a whole) enabled our unit to have fun and create new memories together. Some commented that this session had made them more familiar with certain Zoom features (e.g., annotating on a shared screen). And we got to explore different platforms that could prove useful for online learning in the future.

5. Any words of advice for other officers?

However, as weeks turn into months of remote working, we've found it both necessary and uplifting to make deliberate efforts to stay connected with our colleagues, such as by having lunch gatherings or birthday celebrations over Zoom, and this unit retreat was one event that helped strengthen our bonds.

That said, National Geographic reported on something called 'Zoom fatigue', which happens when our brains work extra hard during online interactions to fill in missing information that we can’t get just by looking at facial expressions. Also, people tend to stare unblinkingly for long periods at the computer screen during Zoom calls, which can irritate our eyes. So don’t forget to blink, folks!

A 'group' photo of the Secondary unit officers and our hosts from Making Teams. No signs of Zoom fatigue... yet!