Are you scrambling for get-together ideas in this intra-COVID holiday season? Don’t cancel your annual events yet! You don’t have to miss out on quality team-building with your work family. This is an opportunity to use technology to its fullest. With some planning, your crew will be on its way to a memorable season! We’re in an era where we need to hang on to as many of our comforts as possible. We work in teams together all day and our jobs rely on one another. A happy workforce makes happy customers! So when we had to postpone our holiday party, I couldn’t have the holidays pass by without some celebration! Thus, I made plans and a festive invite, and I headed for Zoom. Here are some of my tips from our shop’s virtual holiday festivities that will surely get your team in high spirits and excited for the holidays!
S E T T H E T O N E W I T H A N E - V I T E 🤗🎄💫🎁🥂
To get my team excited, I sent a festive invite through Google Calendars. Using fun rhymes and Christmas emojis felt appropriate for this particular event, and my teammates RSVP’d by leaving comments. In this e-vite, I had them each send me their mailing address as the official RSVP - more on this later! If writing rhymes isn’t your thing, hire someone on up work to help you with this!
F I N D A L O C A L S M A L L B U S I N E S S T O S U P P O R T
I got excited when I saw that a friend of mine, who owns a local bakery, Le Dolci, was selling cookie decorating kits. I thought it was the perfect activity for our team and opportunity for us to support a local small business! I reached out to Lisa and asked her to modify the kit a bit for us and picked up a dozen kits! I decided that I would hand deliver them to our team, I needed that human touch, and I think my team loved getting a special delivery. The mere fact that hosting this party could mean we could support a local small business, made all the effort worth it! . Plus she made a quick video full of baking tips and wished us a great event! My team also had great suggestions on small businesses they want to support. Look to your local community or ask your team about who you should support and let’s help each other out during this challenging time!
Here are some other local businesses doing holiday cookie or wreath making kits:
Elle Cuisine $45-$100 Cookie or Gingerbread House Kit
D E L I V E R S O M E T H I N G T O T H E T E A M
I requested mailing addresses so I could hand deliver the cookie kits. In this digital world we’re in, it feels good to have an in-person delivery. The excitement they experienced waiting and receiving their deliveries was an added bonus! Bingo boards (you can find free templates online), ornament kits, presents (play “Guess the present”) and even more can be hand delivered to your team!
Here are some of the cookies we’ve created with the cookie making kits!
C R E A T E F E S T I V E C H E E R
Online parties are new and can feel a little all over the place. To help reduce this, I made a plan to create a particular atmosphere. I asked guests to dress as their idea of holiday cheer and to keep a drink at hand, and I played Christmas music. This really helped make it feel like a party! You can also use this time to have a fun holiday outfit contest.
C H O O S E Y O U R A C T I V I T I E S
A virtual party is going to have a way better flow if there are group activities - plus, it makes for great bonding. Some light competition, playing, and laughing will really strengthen your team's connection. We like to naturally build in fun and positive experiences - this virtual party was no exception. Get creative and use your team's interests for games! Here are some other ideas you can use for your virtual party; Gingerbread man decorating, ornament crafting, hot cocoa decorating, virtual scavenger hunt, and more!
G E T T O K N O W T H E T E C H A N D U S E T H E A P P T O I T S F U L L E X T E N T.
Zoom was a great app for us to use because of its capabilities. In addition to the group call feature, we also used its audio share feature to play Christmas music. Our team has a ton of fav Christmas songs and it really set the mood and lifted spirits. Our trivia was done through Zoom Polls, which helped us stay organized, interactive and well-paced through the game.
We had three rounds of trivia, including random Christmas trivia, shop/biz trivia, and trivia about our team members! If you want to do something similar, you can send it out questionnaires via Google!
I N C L U D E T H E F A M !
This was a great opportunity to get to know everyone’s families since we were all at home! We got to know more about each other's home life, their partners, and their kids. We made this party into a fun activity for their kids too, as they got to judge our cookies! Our team members' partners got to introduce themselves and share something interesting about themselves too. There was nothing about work, it was all about us feeling the love and sharing a connection!
We really believe in creating a fun and happy community company culture here. Our team is well-structured and communicative, which really drives our efforts with our brides. A happy team creates happy experiences, and in the most challenging year of most of our lives, it’s more important than ever to smile and laugh together!
We made a TikTok on how to host a fun and festive virtual holiday party, click here to watch our video!
If you liked our ideas and hosted a virtual party of your own, share it with us using the hashtag #FSvirtualparty on Instagram or duet us on Tiktok! We’d love to see and feel the holiday cheer!
