The office Christmas party has always been one of the social highlights of everyone’s year. It’s a chance to kick back and socialise with colleagues, switch off after a stressful year and look forward to the coming festive break, as well as get a pat on the back from your boss for a job well done…hopefully.
Since corporate parties are known to bring your employees together, it might not be best to cancel the celebrations. Your employees’ morale highly depends on such occasions and as much as it may not be business as usual, there are ways to get around keeping your staff healthy and happy with many different office Christmas party alternatives.
Online secret santa
It’s still possible to implement the traditional Secret Santa and deliver a secret present via post to a workmate. After all, everyone has become an expert in online shopping. In fact, there are plenty of apps to make wish lists to make sure you won’t miss anyone on your team and choose the right gifts. To avoid any misunderstandings, it’s best to include a price range for the gifts.
Virtual work Christmas party
This is one of the more convenient office Christmas party ideas. Only this time you won’t need to rearrange the furniture, or go all out on decorations. This is great if you’re looking for office Christmas party ideas that are more affordable, and you can throw in a quiz or Christmas jumper theme to make things a bit more interesting.
Virtual wine tasting party
Chances are, your colleagues could use a drink, so why not send wine to each home office and cheers together? If you’re all local, pay your local bottle shop to deliver; otherwise, have a winery ship to the individual locations. Either way, ask them if they’ll walk everyone through a virtual tasting together-make it a blind tasting if you’re feeling competitive.
Toast the team
Keep it simple and raise a glass to highlight the bright spots or company wins during this hard time. Give department heads a prompt if you want them to prepare a word in advance, too. On line awards are a sure win for keeping staff motivated and recognising their achievements in a challenging year for most if not all.
Escape Rooms
If you think an immersive, puzzle-solving experience that requires teamwork, logical thinking and imagination sounds like something your team would enjoy, a virtual escape room might be the ideal activity for your virtual Christmas party celebrations. After surging in popularity in recent years, there was the potential for escape rooms to be left behind during lockdown. Fortunately, this hasn’t been the case. They’ve gone virtual, and in doing so have become an exhilarating Christmas party alternative. They’re perfect for smaller teams seeking a thrilling challenge.
It’s been a tough year. We’ve all been affected by the pandemic in one way or another; we’ve all had to make sacrifices and we continue to do so. This is why it’s more important than ever to show your employees just how much you appreciate them, all be it in a slightly different way this Christmas. Offering a selection of office Christmas party alternatives this year, could just be the fun end needed to a very bizarre year.