Office holiday parties can be one of two things. They can be boring and painful for everyone involved. Or, they can be exciting and hilariously fun. The thing that makes the difference between these two outcomes isn’t the availability of alcoholic drinks or the youth of the company’s employees. Instead, it lies in the event planning.
Sure, some companies can get away with sticking their employees in a big room with snacks and boozy temptations. Sometimes this goes over quite well. But for many companies, this approach isn’t appreciated by party attenders. It can even lead to disastrous HR nightmares if things go badly enough. At the very least, party attendees are forced to make small talk for hours and awkwardly mingle with people they see every day at work. For this reason, office parties aren’t usually something that employees look forward to. In fact, most articles online about office holiday parties are either on how to survive them or how to get out of them all together.
Why Team Building is Better than Corporate Parties
So, what can you do to ramp up the fun for your staff and throw them a holiday party they will be talking about in the new year? The answer is simple. Plan some fun, interactive team building activities for them!
One company decision-maker spoke of their constant disappointment with holiday parties. One year, they decided to create an event that would bring their employees together as a team and create meaningful connections and new engagement within the company.
They held their holiday event in the community, giving their employees a chance to discover their city. The employees enjoyed the ability to create new connections between themselves as a team in a new environment. As a result, people enjoyed greater satisfaction with the holiday event than they had with regular holiday parties. Additionally, this kind of celebration really set the stage for a new year by creating positivity and encouraging collaboration.
How You Can Save Your Company Holiday Party
Strayboots has something similar in mind when it comes to innovating holiday events. We know, planning these things can be arduous. You have to figure out what your employees would like to do, talk to numerous event locations, coordinate with planners, and work around their availability. It’s easier to just book a restaurant or a banquet hall and caterer, right?
Strayboots Takes Planning Out of Your Hands
Lucky for you, Strayboots has a great solution to these problems. We provide team building activities for companies worldwide, making event planning a breeze. We know what’s relevant, fun, innovative, and what your specific team members find most exciting. And the best part, Strayboots does all the work for you in setting up and executing a plan. During events, all participants are connected via cell phone, so you won’t be tangled in a communication web trying to coordinate every single individual. Forget about pouring over schedules and struggling to herd people together.
Innovate Your Holiday Events with Fun Challenges
The best thing you can do to innovate your office party is to get everyone active and participating. With Strayboots’ popular scavenger hunts, send your staff out on the town. Break your employees into teams and have them compete with each other. This is great for setting up a collaborative environment and getting everyone excited.
With our scavenger hunts, participants roam city neighborhoods looking to complete challenges and take funny pictures with each other. They will have to answer riddles and questions along the way which can be customized however you like. Challenge your employees with questions about your company or create holiday-themed challenges to get people in a festive mood.
With your city decorated for Christmas and celebratory feelings in the air, there’s no better place to celebrate the holidays than outside. Although we offer these events like team building activities year-round, our special holiday-themed scavenger hunts and games are designed for festivity.
When you book a scavenger hunt with Strayboots, we pick a neighborhood to highlight the best places in your city. You can even talk with our experts and ask for specific locations to be involved such as a holiday display you want your teams to visit as part of their experience.
Indoors or Out. End with a Bang.
We recommend ending your scavenger hunt with everyone at one location, like a bar or restaurant, where you can continue your office party. Now that everyone’s had fun running around town, the teams can come together and reflect on the memories they’ve made and whatever other message you want to reinforce to your staff during this time.
If it’s too cold outside to go gallivanting across the town and you like the idea of an indoor party, then you’ll want to check out our indoor group adventures. Strayboots can plan indoor scavenger hunts for your team involving riddles, challenges, and funny photos. For offices with a passion for art or history, hold your scavenger hunt at a local museum. We’ve coordinated some great museum hunts in LA, DC, and NYC among many others.
Your fun night ends with an online event summary containing a scoreboard and all the pictures that the teams have taken, which can be shared on social media. You can even reward teams with anything from gift cards to concert tickets, provided by Strayboots on our VIP package.
For adding some fun to an office or conference room party, you can incorporate competitive trivia challenges. Participants can answer trivia questions about your company from their phones, and then you can award prizes to winners. Create riddles about the office or photo challenges about your company’s values. These can get your party guests engaged and is a great way to start off a night by breaking the ice for everyone.
Plan Your Holiday Party Now!
Let us know about your next company event so Strayboots can make it fun! Just contact us and team members will help you get started. We’ve planned events for many innovative companies such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook. Over 300,000 participants have been involved in our team building activities.
Don’t let your holiday party be generic and boring this year. There are many options to choose between to make your holiday celebration fun and memorable.
