Steal these ideas for your holiday celebration!

Bringing cheer this ‘virtual’ holiday season

We figure many of you may be paralyzed as you begin to organize your annual holiday celebration and may be thinking a) “I can’t afford an agency to help plan” or b) “I don’t know where to start”.

So…here are some simple ideas to integrate to make sure you still get your people together to drive culture and connection this holiday season.

Huddle Small

For those organizations with 50+ people, think about creating smaller “community” gatherings within the holiday celebration. Research shows that engagement (people talking, “actually” connecting) increases by 50% when you have less than 20 people in a virtual meeting. So if you have 200 people, create (10) breakout rooms in Zoom or Teams and have games, special guests or entertainment rotate through the rooms. A CEO could spend 10 minutes in each room making the rounds spreading cheer.

Interactive Music

Our musicians are struggling to make it through these non-performing times, so why not throw that local pub piano player or acoustic guitarist a small fee to join your virtual celebration (call your local Pub and ask “Who used to perform that was the most popular and spontaneous with patrons?“). While the occasional “Freebird” could pop up, instead theme the music requests to “TV show theme songs” to help inspire nostalgic memories, or create your own theme!

Find the Connection

To the first idea, what if you grouped everyone based on a shared “connection” they may not know they share….and they have to figure out why they’re together? Do a pre-gathering survey with questions like “What would be your last meal?“, “What is a secret talent you have?” or “The reason you most love working at this organization?” and do the survey a couple weeks in advance so they forget about it by the time of the celebration. Create 10 or so of those questions, group the attendees, and encourage them to figure it out – for a prize, of course!

Most of all, have fun and be together, even if it’s ‘virtual’. If you can be authentic to your organization, give your team ways to connect through the screen that are different than the 147 Zoom calls they have weekly….it will feel different….and what better gift to deliver this season than a ‘curated’ feeling?