As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact work and social settings, choosing to continue with your traditional office party this holiday season may not be the best choice to make. However, if the Coronavirus has proven anything, it’s that people are resilient and inventive, coming up with ways to work around these obstacles. Do you still want to be festive and celebrate with your colleagues? If so, here are some alternative office holiday party ideas to use this Christmas season.
Allow your coworkers to get their party on at home with a beautiful gift basket.
Some workplaces may decide to replace their traditional holiday party with nothing, which is certainly an option that you may wish to pursue. However, just because you’re not partying together doesn’t mean that you can’t reach out to your colleagues and provide them with a little something extra to spice up their holiday season.
When it comes to giving the perfect season’s greetings and helping your colleagues get their party on, you may want to go the traditional route and send your warm wishes in the form of an elegant gift basket. Your basket could include items like:
- Ornaments that they can hang on their trees
- Gift cards to restaurants and stores in their area
- Snacks that they can enjoy during their free time
- Bath and body products (if coworkers have no known allergies)
- Personalized company Christmas cards that feature employee names and your company name, individual photos as well as your favorite photos from the office taken over the past year that showcase your appreciation and add a personal touch, and a holiday greeting that makes a business greeting card feel more like a personal Christmas card. Whatever you’re looking to create that helps you wish your colleagues happy holidays and a happy new year, going the personalized business holiday card route can be a great way to express your sentiments.
If you can’t have a party together, that doesn’t mean you can’t give them a meaningful gift that helps them celebrate the holidays and have a wonderful time on their own.
Host a virtual Christmas party and help coworkers capture important memories.
Arguably one of the most popular ways to celebrate safely is by hosting a virtual holiday party. Although this can sound like a foreign and uncertain idea to many, many companies are spending a lot of time to make it as exciting virtually as it would be in-person. This means decorating their backgrounds or finding virtual filters for their screens, sending gift baskets and making plans to eat and drink certain items, and playing games over video.
You can also take it a step further and send your colleagues a gift like a photo manager to help them capture their favorite moments throughout their party and store them forever. A great photo manager will offer your colleagues plenty of space to build a photo library from various devices as well as from cloud storage, help them share their entire photo collection with friends and family, and give them a complete solution for photo storage. When you go above and beyond for your employees and your colleagues, they remember, especially during the holiday season.
Consider hosting one-on-ones with your business partners on the side until Christmas arrives.
It can be difficult to speak with everyone on a mass virtual call, making it hard to get to know how everyone’s holiday season is going and getting to speak with them on a more personal level. Along with your virtual party, you may wish to host one-on-ones with each employee leading up to the party so that you can wish them a Merry Christmas and give them the opportunity to interact with you. This can be a great way to build relationships in the workplace and make your colleagues feel more valued.
COVID-19 has made it difficult to gather safely, but there are always ways to work around this. If you can’t host your traditional holiday party but still want to celebrate with your coworkers, use the ideas above to come up with a plan before Christmas rolls around!
