Alternatives to the Holiday Office Party

With company-supplied punch, soft drinks, and mulled cider, ask employees to bring in a plate of cookies to share with their coworkers. Keep the event low pressure by specifying that bakery products are welcome, too. Make sure the company orders a supply of bakery cookies to ensure that every employee has a chance to sample a variety.

Make the event festive with holiday music and gift certificate prizes for the bakers of the employees’ favorite cookies. If your employees are interested – and do ask, not assume interest from holiday-stressed bakers – you can also sponsor a cookie exchange.

In its third year, so well on its way to becoming an annual tradition, employees at TechSmith Corporation select a day to wear and enjoy their favorite glittery, holiday-only, ugly sweaters and sweatshirts. Selected and loved with poor taste and abandon, the contest to wear the ugliest holiday sweater of all sparks fun and laughter all day long. Accompany the festivity with photos and company-supplied refreshments for all.

A client company’s annual tradition, instead of an office party, involved closing down production four hours early on an afternoon during the holiday season. Company-supplied beer and wine and a catered sandwich fixings / hot soups or turkey lunch highlighted the festivities, but the emphasis was on employees playing games together. Card games, shuffleboard, basketball, board games, Pictionary, table tennis, pool, and more, sparked hours of fun and friendly competition, and de-emphasized drinking.

Employees sign up to exchange cards with coworkers. As your company becomes larger, the cost and time involved in sending cards to all coworkers becomes prohibitive for many employees. Why not pull names from a hat so coworkers can still exchange cards, say 1-5, rather than sending to the whole office. Or, limit cards to departments. Spread the holiday cheer with holiday cards sent in smaller doses. If using a drawing, names should be entered the same number of times as the number of cards each employee agrees to send. Keep your recipients secret. Do the drawing at a company lunch, ugly sweater day, or cookie exchange.

Employees find charitable giving motivational and exciting. Pinpoint the charities your employees support or carry our more giving for the charities identified in your company philanthropic plan, if you have one. Visual giving is most on display during the holidays. Employees enjoy seeing piles of food, gifts, clothing, and household items growing in the company lobby or break room.

Employees build team when they band together to paint walls for older community members to brighten their holiday season, for example. Whatever charitable pursuits you choose, you can pursue them as an alternative to the office party. Or, charitable giving can supplement any of the other ideas shared here.

Employees may enjoy celebrating the holiday season with a potluck lunch at work. If you don't do these too often, and you alternate them with company-supplied, catered feasts, employees enjoy showing off their culinary skills. Post a sign up list online or in the lunch room so employees bring a variety of foods to share. A potluck lunch is a festive occasion, especially when you combine the potluck with any of these other alternatives to the office party, including Secret Santa and Ugly Holiday Sweater Day.

In a special twist to the traditional potluck fare, one client company with a large number of employees from various countries, asked employees to bring a traditional dish that represented their country's cuisine to the potluck. The annual holiday season potluck became the most looked forward to event of the year. Employees savored unfamiliar, but delicious dishes, that were native to their coworkers' countries of origin.

In one client company where employees worked in a manufacturing clean room environment, holiday cheer spread every year as teams of employees competed to decorate the windows that looked in on employees from outside the clean room. Employees voted on first, second, and third place windows. You can sponsor a similar contest in your workplace. Positives? Your workplace is the image of holiday cheer throughout the season as employees vie in teams to decorate a work area, an office, a conference room, or a public area.

Winners are generally voted on by other employees and the gift certificate (or other small gift) award ceremony can take place in conjunction with any other activities listed in these alternatives to an office party. Do keep in mind that when a team is competing, the prize must be shared, or the equivalent provided for each team member.

Draw one employee name from the names submitted by employees who want to participate. Hold the cost-limited gift exchange at a potluck lunch. Even more fun? Secret Santa was a holiday-long event in one of my client companies. Secret Santa, still with a serious expenditure limit, engaged employees for several weeks as the Secret Santa planned a series of little gifts and surprises for their recipient.

I remember coming in to surprises in my mail box, on my desk, and hanging on the restroom mirror. Other Santas were even more creative - think ribbon-festooned cubicles. Half the fun was surprising the recipient while keeping the Secret Santa’s identity under wraps.

Another Internet twist on Secret Santa requires that participating employees purchase their gifts on eBay with a price limit of $25, including shipping.

Because of competition for employee time, attention, energy, and investment during the December holiday season, some companies schedule a party during another time of year. Schedule your company's founding party in April, a mid-summer eve in July, or an early fall harvest in September. Each company has events and associations in its history that employees may want to celebrate with an office party.

Outside of the December holiday season, venues are available and less expensive. Food, dress, decorations, and drinks can be less ambitious and more casual and fun. Run wild with your imagination. Even a picnic on the company grounds may beat the holiday blow out when employees are over-celebrated and over-stressed.

Maybe your organization still wants to hold an office party for the holidays. You can hold a fun, less costly alternative to the traditional fancy blow outs. You can even schedule and hold the office party at a time or location to involve families, if you wish. A combination of casual clothes (no glitter clothes to purchase), children invited (no babysitters to find), and fun, comfortable casual surroundings make these parties fun for all.

Key to limit alcohol consumption is to provide lots of activities. Adults and children alike enjoy Wii games and other chances to compete for small prizes, such as card games, shuffleboard, darts, and pool tournaments. Held onsite, or in a local tavern, the key to low key includes a buffet, casual dress, and lots of team building activities to play and share with coworkers, and their families, if you choose. An enterprising employee may even want to play Santa for the kids...