A Big 5 at Work guide for HR, L&D and team leads choosing a workshop for a remote or hybrid team: what to look for, which formats work online, sample agendas and the questions to ask every vendor.
The short answer
A remote team-building workshop improves communication when it targets specific behaviors: how clearly people write, how they give feedback, how they handle disagreement and how work gets handed off. The workshops that do this give everyone a shared, research-based language for how they work, practice real conversations instead of playing games, and follow up in the tools the team already uses. Big 5 at Work builds its virtual workshops on the Big Five (OCEAN) personality model, the most widely researched model of personality in psychology, so a team can see why the same Slack message lands differently with different people.
Key takeaways
The problem
Most remote team building is designed to make people feel connected for an hour, not to change how they work together the next morning. A cameras-on icebreaker, an online escape room or a virtual trivia night can be a pleasant break. But none of them touch the moments where remote communication actually breaks down: a terse message read as irritation, a decision made in one channel that half the team never saw, or feedback softened so much that the point never arrives.
Remote work moves most communication into writing and scheduled calls. That strips out the hallway context people used to fill in the gaps, so small differences in how people prefer to communicate turn into misreads. A workshop that improves communication has to work on those misreads directly. It should name the differences, explain where they come from, and give people a practiced way to handle them.
Define the outcome
Better communication on a remote team means fewer misreads and faster, clearer decisions in four specific areas. Defining these before you buy a workshop gives you something to measure afterward, instead of a vague sense that the session "went well."
Clarity is whether people understand what is being asked, by when and why, the first time they read it. On remote teams this shows up in how requests are written, how meetings end, and whether decisions are recorded where everyone can find them.
Conflict is whether disagreements get raised early and resolved on the merits. Remote teams often have less open conflict and more silent conflict, which surfaces later as missed deadlines or quiet disengagement.
Feedback is whether people can give and receive honest input without it landing as an attack or getting lost in politeness. Written feedback is especially easy to misread, because there is no tone of voice to soften or sharpen it.
Cross-functional handoffs are the points where work moves between people or teams. Remote handoffs fail when one person assumes context the other doesn't have, or when people have very different standards for what "done" means.
Buyer's checklist
Evaluate a remote workshop on five things: whether it has measurable goals, whether it is designed for both live and async work, whether it uses a credible personality or behavior model, whether people practice instead of listen, and whether it follows up in the tools your team already uses. Use the checklist below when you compare vendors.
Formats
Short, focused sessions work best online: a 2-hour session, a half day of 3.5 to 4 hours, or a short series of sessions spread over a few weeks. A full day on video is hard to facilitate well, because attention drops and people end up multitasking with cameras off. That's why Big 5 at Work offers its 2 Hour Session and Half-Day Workshop virtually, and runs its full-day Team Deep Dive in person only.
Whatever the format, a few design choices make or break a remote session:
Personality-aware workshops
Personality traits shape how people prefer to send and receive information, and remote work makes those preferences easier to misread. The Big Five model describes personality on five spectrums: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. Every position on each spectrum has a strength and a pitfall, and there is no correct setting. A personality-aware workshop is a session that uses a model like this to explain why teammates communicate differently, then practices ways to bridge the gap.
The patterns below are common tendencies, not rules about any one person. They're the kind of thing a team starts to notice once it has a shared language.
The goal isn't to label people. It's to replace "they're being difficult" with a more accurate read, and then a better conversation. One method Big 5 at Work teaches comes from Christin Camacho's book Why You Need Neurotic People on Your Team: name what is true for the other person, name the objective constraint, and propose a way forward together. For example: "You need the numbers by Tuesday to finish the client deck. The data refresh doesn't land until Wednesday morning. Could we send the deck with last month's figures marked as preliminary, and I'll swap in the new ones by noon Wednesday?"
Compare approaches
There are three broad approaches to remote team building for communication, and they solve different problems. Games build goodwill, coaching builds individual skill, and assessment-backed workshops give the whole team a shared language for working together.
If your team has already used a type-based or style-based tool such as DiSC or the MBTI, a Big Five workshop is a different lens rather than a repeat. Those tools sort people into types or styles, which many teams find memorable and easy to talk about. The Big Five measures each trait on a continuous spectrum and reports where a person falls in percentiles. That matters remotely, because two people who'd both be called "introverts" can sit at very different points on Extraversion, and that difference can show up in how they prefer to meet, write and recharge. We cover the differences in more depth in DiSC vs. the Big Five.
Big 5 at Work's assessment is built on the public-domain IPIP-NEO and scores the five traits and 29 of its 30 facets. It's designed for development and teamwork, not for hiring decisions.
Sample agendas
A good remote agenda moves from understanding (what are our differences?) to practice (what do we do about them?) to commitment (what will we change on Monday?). Here are two sample agendas, each mapped to the communication outcome it serves. Everyone takes the assessment before the session, so no workshop time goes to filling out questions.
Want to try part of this before booking anything?The Trait Line-Up is a free 45-minute activity you can run on Zoom with a shared whiteboard. Get the free facilitator guide, or request a facilitated workshop.
Proof of results
Ask every vendor, including us, how you will know in 30 days whether communication actually changed. A good vendor will help you set that up before the session rather than send a satisfaction survey afterward.
A before-and-after check on specific behaviors. Run a short pulse survey before the workshop and again 30 days later. Ask about concrete behaviors, such as "I know how each teammate prefers to receive feedback" or "Decisions from our meetings are written down where I can find them." Use the same questions both times.
Manager adoption. The clearest sign a workshop stuck is that managers use the language afterward, in one-on-ones, in project kickoffs and when they assign work. Ask how the vendor supports managers after the session.
A 30-day follow-up. Ask what happens a month out: a check-in session, a review of the team's working agreements, or a coaching touchpoint. Without one, most workshop insights fade as soon as the next deadline arrives.
Ongoing use of team results. If the workshop includes a team dashboard or shared results, ask whether people can return to it when a new person joins or a new project starts. A tool people keep using is a better signal than a high score on the day. Big 5 at Work's Team Personality Dashboard is built for this, and the in-person Team Deep Dive includes 30 days of Virtual Coach follow-up.
FAQ
Yes, as long as everyone joins on equal terms. The simplest rule is that every participant joins from their own laptop, even people sitting in the same office, so no one is watching from the far end of a conference room.
Teams of about 6 to 20 people work well online, split into breakouts of three to five. Big 5 at Work's workshop prices cover groups of fewer than 20 people. Larger groups get a custom quote, so the session can be designed with more facilitation or multiple groups.
A video platform with breakout rooms, such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams, and a shared online whiteboard for group exercises. Participants complete the personality assessment online before the session, so the live time goes to discussion and practice.
One well-designed session is enough to build a shared language, followed by a check-in about 30 days later. Revisit it when the team changes a lot, such as after new hires, a reorganization or a new cross-functional project.
Each person receives their own full report. On Big 5 at Work's team dashboard, each member's trait percentiles are shared with the team, so participants should know that before they take the assessment. The assessment is for development and teamwork, not for hiring or performance decisions.
Big 5 at Work's virtual options are the 2 Hour Session at $2,500 and the Half-Day Workshop at $4,500, each for groups of fewer than 20. Assessments ($4.99 per person, less for teams of 10 or more) and the $50 team dashboard are billed separately. For example, a Half-Day for 15 people comes to $4,617.35. See full pricing.
No. The Team Deep Dive is offered in person only, because a full day is too long to facilitate well on video. Remote teams can choose the 2 Hour Session or the Half-Day Workshop instead.
Next step
Start with the assessment. Have one or two people on the team take the free Big Five test and see whether the language fits how your team talks about work. Then look at how the full assessment works, compare workshop options, or find a consultant from the Big 5 at Work Referral Network to run a virtual session for your team. Questions about formats, privacy or group size are answered in the FAQ.
Related reading
Christin Camacho is the founder of Big 5 at Work and the author of "Why You Need Neurotic People on Your Team". Take the free Big Five personality test to see your own results.
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