Virtual Celebrations: Holiday Team Building in 2024
November 1, 2024
by Mary Ann Romano
Creative Holiday Team Building Through Virtual Celebrations in 2024
The in-office or venue-centered holiday party has been a thing of the past since early 2020. Companies have had to get creative when engaging employees in team-building activities, including celebrations. We’ve got some ideas for this holiday season that are all-inclusive and can bring some fun to virtual festivities while boosting morale.
Holiday Team Competition
Nothing says team building better than a good old-fashioned competition where there are prizes to be won. You won’t be shelling out the big bucks for food and beverages or venue rental, so put some of that into fun gifts that teams can play for.
Set aside 60 to 90 minutes for teams, such as company departments, to participate in a series of online games, like trivial quizzes. Allow teams to earn virtual currency (not real) that can be used to buy or bid on interesting gifts.
Book Club Meetup
A great way to engage your teams is to motivate them to read and discuss. Keep the teams to a manageable size and offer them book titles to read or listen to as audiobooks. Encourage participants to meet via video conferencing every week or two to discuss the book.
If some aren’t interested in reading or listening to a book, take the theme in a different direction. You can have teams stream a Netflix series or watch different movies and share their thoughts during meetings.
Try to keep the topics lighthearted. Let teams know that it is OK to curl up with a glass of wine or a cup of tea while meeting to keep it casual.
Yankee Swap
A Yankee Swap is a New England holiday tradition where each participant buys a gift that is universal and non-gender specific and wraps it well. Numbers are randomly assigned to each team member. Others refer to this event as “dirty Santa.”
The first person, number one, chooses which team member’s wrapped gift they want. Once opened, the next person, number two, picks an unopened gift and gets to decide if they want to keep it or swap it for the first person’s gift. The third person chooses a gift and decides if they want to swap it for any other opened gift. At the end of the game, the first person can swap their gift for any open gift.
After all gifts have been opened and swapped, you keep the one you have. To make this work best online, the gifts can be acts of kindness or downloadable gift cards. For instance, your gift might be volunteering at a holiday food drive one day or a link to an Amazon card redemption code.
Let Us Help You With Your Holiday Team Building
These are just three ideas for team building around the holidays using virtual meeting platforms. Teams can relax in their own homes while participating without the need to get dressed up and go out. Just make sure the theme is casual and fun. Invite the team to help in the planning process, or call us at Team Building Unlimited to have us plan your virtual holiday celebration for you.
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