How to run a remote trivia night using Jotform

It’s been just over a year(!) since the pandemic forced tens of millions of people to desert their offices and work from home. But even though arms are getting jabbed with vaccines across the country, a full return to the office doesn’t look like it’s on the horizon.

A recent article in TechRepublic suggested that most employees expect working from home to be the norm in the future, while CNBC suggests that more than 36 million people will still be remote in 2025.

Working remotely has a ton of benefits, but it’s still difficult to replace the social aspects of being in a physical office — no going out to lunch, taking coffee breaks, or sharing birthday cake.

One way we’ve addressed this at Jotform is by hosting remote trivia nights. It’s cost-effective, highly engaging, and just plain fun.

Before COVID-19, trivia nights took a bit of coordinating if you wanted to go to a pub and do it right. But remote trivia more than does the trick, and it’s almost easier to coordinate.

Here’s a full list of the technology requirements needed for remote trivia: Jotform, potentially presentation software like Google Slides or PowerPoint, and a video chat service like Zoom or Google Meet (as long as it features breakout rooms so that teams can chat about answers without other teams hearing them).

Choosing a host and teams

Trivia is a good time, but it still takes some effort. If you’re doing this on a regular basis, it’s a smart idea to rotate who does the hosting so you don’t burn anyone out or make anyone miss out on the fun themselves because they can never participate.

Give the host at least a week to prepare, especially if you’re asking them to come up with their own questions or themes. I’d recommend doing at least three rounds of trivia but no more than four.

It’s also a good idea to select the teams ahead of time. It’s not only a way to avoid hurting feelings over who picked who, but it gets people who might not otherwise interact working together.

Creating a trivia form

There are two ways you can approach your trivia night. One is to have the host read or present the questions, and then have the participants fill in a form with mostly blank form fields and numbers that correspond to the questions asked aloud. This method is sort of like an in-person trivia night where you only know the questions as they’re being asked, one at a time. We’ve done this, with the trivia host sharing their screen and presenting a deck with different trivia questions on each slide.

The other way we’ve done it is by including all of the questions on a single form. One of our trivia hosts even created trivia forms where participants were shown different questions depending on which path they selected. This was easy to implement using conditional logic and added an exciting layer to the game.

In between rounds, the host will count up the correct answers submitted through the form, while the entire group of participants mingles in the common area and catches up.

Conclusion

This has been a rough period that’s taken a toll on employee wellness and mental health. So incorporating social activities isn’t just about having fun, it’s also about reducing the stress on your employees and giving them a chance to interact with one another — all of which leads to more productive employees who stick around for the long term.

Has your company hosted trivia nights during COVID-19? Have you used Jotform to collect the answers? Let us know in the comments below.