After a year of social distancing, virtual meetings have become the norm, but companies have been holding virtual Christmas Parties for their remote teams for years now, and some excellent traditions have evolved. We’ve compiled some of the best here for some festive inspiration.
Virtual Food
We’re not suggesting you ask your employees to pretend to eat whilst they sit in front of the camera. Instead, why not send a festive hamper for your employees to arrive ready for your virtual party? If your budget doesn’t quite stretch that far, why not post each employee a sachet of luxury hot chocolate so you can all enjoy a virtual Cocoa Break to kick off your celebrations?
Virtual Games
There are so many virtual games you can play that you’ll be hard-pressed to choose. Search for templates for Christmas Bingo, Scavenger Hunts, Trivia lists or Christmas Charades for inspiration. You could host a timed Christmas-card-making competition, have sing-along Carol-Karaoke or act out Christmas movie scripts. There are tons of ways to interact without being in the same room.
Set the Mood
Find out what backgrounds are available for your video hosting software to really set the festive feel. Good Housekeeping have compiled a good selection for Zoom, or you can search for some backgrounds for the platform you are using.
Create Your Own Christmas Site to Host It All!
An inexpensive but great way to really tie it all together is to use website hosting to hold your party. With your company’s own festive website, for the run-up to the party you can add daily Christmas quiz questions, encourage staff to share photos of their festive jumpers, vote on the best Christmas songs or create a Christmas movies poll to finally answer the question ‘Is Die Hard is a Christmas movie?’. With domains starting from just £1 for the whole year at places like https://www.names.co.uk/web-hosting and free software available to easily put together a website, this is a really effective way of getting staff to feel connected even though they’re apart.
Just have fun and share the holiday spirit
With just a handful of ideas from this list you can bring some festive cheer to your team and make them feel truly appreciated for their hard work throughout the last year. Sing, laugh and be merry together wherever you are.