Employees can fear embarrassment if they drink too much, whether their spouse will fit in with their colleagues, and if there will be enough non-office talk to sustain an enjoyable evening of conversation. If you are planning your corporate Christmas party, follow these Company Holiday Party Ideas to make the event as enjoyable as possible. Include party games for adults and low-stress icebreaker activities to draw everyone to a comfortable place from which the party can roll on its own.
Tips & Ideas for Your Corporate Holiday Event
Regulate the Alcohol
Too many mistakes and embarrassing situations occur when people have too much to drink. As the office party planner, you can control this issue, without anyone being the wiser!
- Use small wine glasses: your guests will be relaxed nursing their glass of wine, but even with refills, will end up drinking a lot less over the course of the evening
- Do not offer a self-pour bar with cocktails
- Hire a bartender if you will be serving cocktails, and instruct them to reduce the alcohol by 50% in each drink
- Offer punch: while this can be alcoholic, you can control the amount of liquor in the punch and not compromise the taste or the drink’s festive nature.
- Do not have waitstaff automatically refill empty wineglasses
- Make sure to offer water in pretty glasses, and insist that the waitstaff circulates refilling the water glasses throughout the evening.
Provide Nametags
Use nametags with full names and departments listed. While this may seem unnecessary, the company holiday party is often the place and time where employees from one department mingle with employees from a totally unrelated department. Furthermore, the holiday party may be the best occasion for a young or new employee to make a connection with someone further up the office ladder. As your office party planner, you can prevent the awkwardness associated with not remembering someone’s name, even if you should know him or her!
Provide an Icebreaker Activity
An icebreaker will connect people for a common good, get them working together, and will add some educational value to all the participants. A good icebreaker activity that fits this bill is a team activity where you all join forces to answer a company-based questionnaire as a group. Depending on the nature of your company, the questions can be industry-related, company-related, or individual-related. A good example of an individual-related question would ask how the current CEO joined the company, or some similarly-styled question. Have fun with the questionnaire and challenge the participants, but do not include embarrassing questions.
HOL101
 |
