Zoom fatigue? Make online meet-ups more interesting

Invite farm animals to join your Zoom

While you’ve probably seen a fair few of your colleagues' pets pop up on work Zooms, sightings of farmy animals are a little more rare. That is, until now… Cronkshaw Fold Farm in Lancashire hit the headlines when it put out an appeal on its website inviting companies to ‘spice up virtual meetings by inviting along a goat’. What began as a joke is now a popular reality, with the farm hiring out its bleaters, charging £5 for every 10 minutes they spend on a call. The farm’s website allows you to choose your ‘scape-goat’ of choice by browsing pictures and humorous descriptions of each animal’s traits – from headbutting the camera to twitching and performative peeing.

Hire a goat

Bowbridge Alpacas in Fife, meanwhile, is a family-run alpaca farm offering up its four-legged residents as part of a Zoom party package. A 30-minute session (£30) allows you (and up to 100 colleagues working on different devices) to meet the farm’s alpacas – including their adorable babies – or simply have one sit in on your virtual meeting.

Meet some alpacas

Develop team-building skills in a virtual escape room

Once a popular go-to for office socials and team-bonding outings, escape rooms are gradually reestablishing themselves in the digital sphere. Book a virtual session with Escape Live and your team can take on one of 15 rooms, deciphering Shakespeare’s scriptures, fighting pirates or escaping the jungle. Trapped In The Web offers five-themed rooms, each with its own storyline, clues to crack and puzzles to complete.

The Panic Room (pictured) is another experience that has shifted its offering online. Here, you can take on one of seven challenges and, unlike with physical escape room games, there’s no time limit. And if your office are avid Harry Potter fans (or you’re planning something social for a family day), book yourselves onto the Hogwarts Digital Escape Room. Created in America, the experience includes team-building challenges, quizzes, puzzles, and a chance to explore the famous school of witchcraft and wizardry from home.

Take part in a virtual live drawing session

Let creativity flow and stress levels melt away with a virtual drawing or painting masterclass. PopUp Painting Live offers private tutorials for groups in which you’ll be guided through re-creating a masterpiece in under an hour. All materials are sent out to homes in advance, so you don’t need to worry about art supplies. Zoom sessions can hold up to 30 attendees and cost £150 per 15 guests.

Book with PopUp Painting Live

If budgets are tight, or you’d rather take matters into your own hands, look to artist and former mentor on the BBC’s The Big Painting Challenge Pascal Anson is streaming 30-minute tutorials on his YouTube channel, teaching how to draw landscapes, portraits, still-lives and more.

Book onto a virtual group yoga or Pilates class

Regardless of whether workplace workouts were a highlight of your old routine, group yoga or Pilates sessions are an inclusive activity that’s likely to appeal to colleagues of all ages and ability levels. Stretching the City is an organisation hired by businesses to look after their corporate wellbeing schemes. Ordinarily, the company would send in teachers to lead fitness classes on site, but with employees now dispersed and working from home, Stretching the City has taken its business model online, offering hour-long yoga and pilates sessions over Zoom for up to 100 participants at any one time.

Book a class with Stretching the City

Challenge the team to a Zoom cooking lesson

A lockdown trait that unifies many of us is a desire to develop our skills in the kitchen. Thankfully, many restaurants and chefs have risen to the challenge of supplying online cookery classes to help us all eat well while stuck at home. There’s no reason why you can’t book a class for a team of colleagues, either.

In need of inspiration? Old Street restaurant Officina 00 is hosting free pasta-making masterclasses most Thursdays via its Instagram Live channel, with the ingredients posted in advance. Meanwhile, much-loved chain Pizza Pilgrims is delivering make-your-own-pizza kits and offering step-by-step tutorials on how to make them on IGTV. Each kit costs £15pp and contains the ingredients for two margherita pizzas.

For more gourmet fare, look to Learning With Experts (from £29pp), which offers private lessons with some of the best chefs in the world. And if it’s the office cake table you’re missing most, book onto a doughnut-making workshop with lauded London bakery Bread Ahead (£25pp). Classes are held over Zoom and last two hours.

Find more online cooking classes

Unwind with virtual wine tastings and mixology masterclasses

If, in your workspace, the gentle rattle of the office drinks trolley or email entitled ‘After work drinks?’ was once what heralded the end of the working week, you might be sorely missing this ritual. While gathering around the office bar or traipsing to the nearest pub is not possible now, you can still raise spirits among your colleagues by organising drinks at home. In our experience, having some structure brings added excitement to the event, so why not organise a wine tasting or cocktail-making masterclass?

Mayfair’s Hedonism wines hosts private virtual tasting events every Friday, for which bottles most be ordered in advance. For wine tasting with a touch of playful, sensory magic, look to Vignette Wine. Run by wine connoisseur Sophie Griffiths, tastings can be personalised depending on your group’s preference in colour, region and price point.

Alternatively, check out Soho’s renowned whisky shop Milroy’s or The Whisky Exchange (a stockist of all good spirits), both of which invite you to purchase drinks in advance then log onto Zoom for a tutorial as you sip.

As for mixology? You can shake and stir alongside Ryan ‘Mr Lyan’ Chetiyawardana – one of the world’s best mixologists and the man behind Southbank bar Lyaness – thanks to his series of online cocktail-making workshops on MasterClass. Or, look to London cocktail bars including Swift, Coupette and Scout, which all offer cocktail-making tutorials on Instagram Live.

Find more alcohol delivery services

Let your hair down over Zoom karaoke

In the times BC (Before Covid-19), ending up in a sticky-floored karaoke booth belting out the lyrics to cheesy songs surrounded by an audience of cheering colleagues (and regretting it sorely the next morning) was the sign of a particularly messy work night out. The good news? There's nothing to stop you from welcoming the tradition into each of your homes instead. Invite the team to download Karafun, an app with an impressive catalogue of 35,000 songs. Find your favourites in categories ranging from 80s hits to Disney classics, or sing to your strengths with the app’s ranking of easy-to-sing songs for men or women. A party pass costs £4.99 and gives you unlimited access to the database – including on and offline playlists – for two days, while a monthly pass costs £6.99.

Wish them well with a letterbox care package

Aside from team socials, a great way to say thank you, congratulations, happy birthday to colleagues is to send a little something to arrive at their door. From decorate-your-own goodies from Doughnut Time to artisan products for mums, luxury afternoon teas and even stellar bacon sandwiches, we’ve rounded up some of the most thoughtful gifts to slip through the letterbox of those you care about.

Bundles of joy