How To Spread Festive Cheer With Your Team While Working From Home

This year the need for festive cheer is felt by us all and with the usual Christmas parties and office festivities put on hold this time around, it's time to pull out our creative hats, coats, gloves and all the trimmings and get ready to give the office Christmas party a possibly long overdue facelift.

Whether working from home solo or leading a newly remote team, here's how to bring the holiday cheer to yours and your team's work from home set-up.

Virtual Holiday Scavenger Hunt

Break up the 2020 Zoom fatigue by adding interactive activities to your virtual party. With a virtual scavenger hunt you can create prompts and whoever brings the items back to the zoom party first wins a point. Optional bonus points can be awarded if that person shares the story behind the object. Use prompts like a favourite gift of all time, something that reminds you of home, the most festive item in your house or the item you've owned the longest and enjoy a light-hearted, fun and active way to sign off 2020 with your colleagues virtually.

Share a Christmas Playlist

Get your co-workers and colleagues in the festive spirit by creating a Christmas themed playlist for you all to listen to while working from home in the lead up to Christmas. Send it out to your team and encourage everyone to get involved by adding in their own festive favourites into the mix.

Prepare the ice breakers

It's been a year of constant 'Zoom'-ing and still, there's no getting used to the awkwardness of being the first to arrive at a virtual meeting, making small talk through a screen. There's also less opportunity for one on one conversations when using video call replacements for in-person meetings. To help with potential awkward silences or more likely, awkwardly talking over each other, constantly, within your virtual Christmas party, split the group into break out rooms for activities and small group interactions.

Here are a few festive icebreakers to have on hand:

What's the weirdest Christmas gift you've ever received?

What is your favourite holiday food?

What's your favourite Christmas movie?

Does your family have any interesting Christmas traditions?

Cook up a storm

Recreate the traditional team Christmas dinner by creating a holiday recipe guide. Ask members of your team to submit a minimum of one recipe each for their favourite Christmas dish and edit together a festive team recipe book jam-packed with drool-worthy dishes. Use a tool like Caanva to pull together the design elements and send the completed collection to the team to enjoy and experiment with over the Christmas period. You could even take time during your virtual Christmas party for cooking demos from team members or holiday-themed cook-offs among teams.

While we may not be able to gather in the office and celebrate in person this Christmas, there are still plenty of ways to spread Christmas cheer this holiday season. You and your team have worked hard all year, chances are you've all worked harder than ever and so deserve to unwind, connect and celebrate the festive season with a bit of fun. Merry Christmas!