What are good wellbeing activities for remote and hybrid employees?

Choose activities that work the same way for everyone, wherever they sit. A two-minute quiet arrival at the start of meetings, a one-word check-in, walking one-to-ones by phone, a weekly meeting-free block and a closing appreciation round all work well. They are short, need no equipment and can be repeated every week without becoming a burden.

How often should a hybrid team run wellbeing activities?

Little and often works better than large and rare. I suggest one or two very short practices every week, a walking one-to-one every fortnight, a listening circle each month and one shared CSR activity each quarter. Keep the same rhythm for about three months before changing it, so the team has time to settle into it.

How do you include remote staff in office wellbeing sessions?

Design the session as if everyone were remote. Give each person their own screen or have the facilitator speak to the camera first, invite remote colleagues to answer before the room does, and run a parallel online version of anything physical. Keep every activity optional and unrecorded so that people can take part honestly.

Employee Wellbeing Activities for Hybrid Teams

The best employee wellbeing activities for hybrid teams are short, repeatable and designed so that people at home and people in the office take part as equals. Think shared opening rituals, camera-optional pauses, walking conversations and honest check-ins, built into the working week instead of added as an extra event.

I work with teams in person in Al Barsha, Dubai, and online across Abu Dhabi, the GCC and Singapore, so hybrid is simply how most of my own sessions already run.

I work with teams across the UAE and beyond, and the pattern I see is consistent. Hybrid working did not remove the need for connection. It simply removed the corridor, the lift and the coffee machine where connection used to happen by accident. In a hybrid team, it has to happen on purpose.

Why hybrid teams need a different approach

Most wellbeing calendars were designed for a full office: a lunchtime session in the boardroom, a fruit basket, a team outing. In a hybrid team, each of those quietly creates two groups. The people in the room get the experience. The people on the screen get a muted video of other people having the experience.

Three things are different in a hybrid week:

Attention is fragmented. Home days are often back-to-back calls with no natural breaks between them.
Presence is uneven. Some colleagues are seen every day, others rarely, and visibility starts to feel like value.
Small talk disappears. Meetings start on the agenda and end on the minute, so nobody learns how anyone actually is.

Good activities answer these three things directly. They create pauses, they level the room, and they make space for a human sentence before the work begins.

Four design rules before you choose anything

Before I suggest a single activity to a client, I ask them to agree on four rules. They save a great deal of wasted effort.

Same experience for everyone. If one person is remote, run the activity as if everyone is. One screen per person, or one clear facilitator who speaks to the camera first.
Short and regular beats long and rare. Five minutes every week does more for a team's rhythm than a half-day once a year.
Always optional, never recorded. People take part honestly only when they can also decline without explanation.
Inside working hours. An activity scheduled for the evening tells people that wellbeing is their own time and their own problem.

Employee wellbeing activities that work on a screen

These are the ones I return to most often with distributed teams. None needs equipment or a budget line.

The two-minute arrival. Open the weekly meeting with two minutes of silence, cameras optional. Everyone finishes the email in their head and actually arrives. It feels strange the first time and expected by the fourth.
The one-word check-in. Each person offers one word for how they are arriving today. No explanations, no fixing. It takes under a minute and tells a manager more than a survey.
Walking one-to-ones. Move the regular one-to-one to a phone call and ask both people to walk, indoors or out. Conversations become noticeably more open when nobody is looking at their own face.
The shared breathing pause. Mid-afternoon, a three-minute guided pause that anyone can join. Slow breathing, shoulders down, eyes away from the screen.
Meeting-free blocks. Agree one protected block each week when no internal meetings are booked. This is a wellbeing activity in the truest sense, because it gives attention back.
Appreciation round. Close the last meeting of the week with each person naming one colleague and one specific thing they did. Specific is the important word.

Making office days worth the commute

If people travel in, particularly through Dubai traffic, the day should offer something a screen cannot. I encourage teams to stop using office days for individual desk work with headphones on, and to plan them around being together.

A shared table lunch with no laptops and no agenda, once per office day.
A listening circle. Twenty minutes, one question, each person speaks once without interruption. A good first question is "What is taking most of your attention this month?"
A quiet corner. One small space with soft light and no screens, where anyone can sit for ten minutes without being asked why.
Pair walks. Colleagues who rarely work together are paired for a fifteen-minute walk. This rebuilds the cross-team links that hybrid working thins out.

Record nothing from these sessions and report nothing upwards. Their value is that they belong to the team.

Activities that bridge home and office

The hardest gap in a hybrid team is between the people who happen to be in together and the people who are not. A few practices close that gap gently.

The buddy rhythm. Pair each person with a colleague on a different office pattern. Ten minutes a week, no work talk required.
A shared playlist or reading shelf. A small, low-effort thread where people add a song or an article. It gives quieter colleagues a way to be known.
Common start and stop. Agree a team signal for beginning and ending the day, such as a short message in the group channel. It replaces the missing act of arriving and leaving, and it gives permission to stop.
Giving back together. Choose one CSR activity per quarter that remote and office staff can both contribute to. Doing something for others is one of the quickest ways I know to help a scattered team feel like one team.

A simple monthly rhythm to start with

You do not need all of the above. A team that tries twelve activities in one month keeps none of them. This is the starter rhythm I usually recommend:

Weekly: the two-minute arrival and one-word check-in at the main team meeting.
Weekly: one meeting-free block that leadership visibly respects.
Fortnightly: walking one-to-ones between managers and each team member.
Monthly: one listening circle on an office day, with a parallel online circle for those who are remote.
Quarterly: one shared CSR activity.

Run it for three months before changing anything. Rhythm needs repetition before anyone can feel it.

How to tell whether it is working

I am cautious about measuring wellbeing with numbers alone, and I would never promise a particular result. What I ask leaders to watch for is simpler and more honest:

Do people still turn up to the optional activities after the novelty has gone?
Are the one-word check-ins becoming more truthful?
Do remote colleagues speak as often in meetings as those in the room?
Are people raising difficulties earlier, while they are still small?

If the answer to most of these is yes, the team is connecting. If participation is thin, ask the team what would suit them better and change the activity, not the people. These practices support routine and connection at work; they are not a substitute for advice from a doctor or other qualified professional when someone needs it.

Your next step

Start with one meeting this week. Two minutes of quiet, one word each, and see what changes in the room and on the screen.

Dr S Pujah works with teams in person in Al Barsha, Dubai, and online across Abu Dhabi, the GCC and Singapore.

If you would like these practices designed around your own people and your own hybrid pattern, that is the work I do through Unmute. You can see how Unmute brings emotional connection into corporate teams and decide whether it suits your organisation. Bring your team size and working pattern with you, and we can begin from there.