10+ Creative April Fools’ Day Prank Ideas For Remote Teams (easy to pull off)

One of the benefits of office teams is the ability to prank your teammates on April Fools’ Day in a lot of creative ways. When everyone is working from home, the list of creative jokes to pull off shrinks.

Having said that, there are a lot of ways for remote teams to have fun and (harmlessly) prank each other on April Fools’ Day.

Here’s our review of the top 10 best prank ideas that will give your teammates a chuckle.

#1. Rename teammates’ accounts

If you have the power to change your team’s Slack, Zoom, or other nicknames, April Fools’ Day is a perfect time to let your creativity out.

You can give everyone wordplay-based names or get inspiration from fictional characters. The prank will be even more powerful if you change people’s avatars while you are at it.

#2. Pretend to be someone else for a day

What for the rest of the year would be considered identity theft becomes a valid April Fools’ Day prank. The gist is simple: change your profile picture to that of a teammate you want to prank and your profile name to their name.

Then, go ahead and write hilarious messages on Slack and other chats until your target realizes something is amiss.

#3. Where’s that important report?

If you are running a team, April Fools’ Day is a chance to have teammates at the edge of their seats. Out of the blue, shoot a teammate a Slack message like: “I am looking forward to seeing the report we discussed before”.

Follow it up with: “It’s really important for the client, they were asking me about it repeatedly” and “I want you to present it to the entire team at X pm”. After a few messages like this, log off and ignore the teammate.

Once the clock hits set time, reveal the prank to your colleague. They will definitely be relieved to not have to present (maybe, a little pissed as well).

#4. Communicate with colleagues only through emojis

This is one of the most creative and harmless April Fools’ Day pranks — you just can’t go wrong with it. Start communicating your status updates and explaining tasks to the team in emojis alone and watch everyone try to make sense.

The fun triples if the entire team spends the day communicating in emojis. You’ll be surprised to discover how much you can covey using smiley faces alone!

#5. Set creative Slack autoresponders

April Fools’ Day is an excellent opportunity to spice up your “I’m out of office at the moment” auto-responder.

A few creative ideas suggested by HubSpot are:

• The doorbell just rang. It’s the UPS driver. He’s loading me onto a truck.
• Guess where I am.
• I’ll get back to you once I’m back from my trip to the fridge.

You can search the web for inspiration or set an inside joke within your team as an autoresponder.

#6. Rickroll your colleagues

This is a classic prank that everyone should see coming. Rickrolling is a trick of sending people a link that is supposed to be a meeting but takes them to Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” instead.

On a Friday morning, a lot of people will still get a chuckle when a “Zoom-like” invite takes them to a rickroll, making this old-but-gold a great mood-lifter.

#7. Deliver a creative package

While this one has to be planned in advance, sending your remote team a creative surprise delivery is an excellent way to bond and have fun together. Here are a few ideas to use as a starting point:

• Glitter bombs
• Inception packages (a package in a package in a package…)
• A donut box full of veggies and greens
• A box of caramel onions.

#8. Wish someone a (non-existing) happy birthday

This prank is times more powerful if the entire team is involved. Choose a target and wish her a Happy Birthday throughout the day.

The teammate might be confused but will also be happy to read everyone’s kind words and wishes.

#9. Change up your social media banners and branding

Another way to make everyone’s day better is by putting up a funny LinkedIn cover, social media profile pictures, or making hilarious typos in your brand’s latest content.

Word of caution: don’t forget to reverse the changes the next day to stay presentable for the rest of the year.

#10. The list goes on and on…

A few other popular April Fools’ Day pranks for remote teams are:

• Introducing a fake colleague to the team and spending a day onboarding a “new hire”.
• “Accidentally” revealing a “secret folder” during the meeting.
• Set a creative background or a filter during a video call.
• Make a fake (but funny) announcement on the team’s behalf.

Last but not least, the funniest pranks are the once you come up with yourself. Take a look around your team and find hilarious ways to spice monotonous, mundane processes.

By the way, throwing April Fools’ Day pranks is a lot easier when the entire team is working in the same space, like a virtual office. Then, you can experiment with the layout, change rooms and floors, or add funny objects to your space.

If you want to give virtual offices a try, check out oVice. We are happy to see you on our tour space (watch out for pranks by the customer success team).