As the scientists, politicians and Christmas adverts have all told us, Christmas will be a little different in 2020.
We’ve written about how to embrace working from home during the winter before but keeping up the festive spirit while we’re all away from the workplace or even furloughed will be a difficult ask.
But it is possible, here’s how!
Start with a company group
This could be a Facebook group, a Microsoft Teams group or whatever messaging or communication platform your company uses.
You could create a group for your whole company or have individual groups for smaller teams if you’re at a larger company. You could then help managers with ways to get the team talking and morale boosted.
However you set it up, there needs to be a place where everyone can keep in touch. This way, all your remote workers and furloughed staff can get involved and stick together through the festive season.
Your group can then be a platform for all your festive fun ideas like the ones below!
A Christmas tree competition
We all love a bit of friendly festive competition! We’re not talking about the 5.30pm game of Monopoly on Christmas day, we’re talking about a Christmas tree decorating competition.
It could be a small tree at your desk or the big tree in your living room, ask everyone to submit their Christmas tree to your company group and pick a winner!
If you want to spice it up a bit, you could create a World Cup of Christmas trees. Put all the Christmas trees into groups of four and create a poll for each group. The two trees that get the most votes in each group go through to knock-out rounds where people vote through a poll for their winning tree in each round. Eventually you’ll reach the final where the two most popular trees are voted on to decide the winner!
A virtual Christmas party
The usual Christmas party is unlikely for many this year, but all is not lost. A virtual Christmas party may not be the same but will still be a great way to boost morale this year!
The more creative your virtual Christmas party the better. Whether it’s over Zoom, Teams or Skype, create different rooms for people to drop in and out of. Do the same events you would normally at your Christmas party but virtually!
Get creative and host your yearly employee awards too. However you do it, it’s a great way to get everyone together over the Christmas period.
A gingerbread house competition
This idea is great for the family and for getting everyone involved! The judging of the gingerbread houses will have to be restricted to just the aesthetics, so no Paul Hollywood-esque judging of the flavours and the textures for this one unfortunately.
However, the best decorated gingerbread house wins. Ask everyone to submit their gingerbread houses to your group and judge the winner!
A bit of Christmas recognition
After a challenging year for everyone, a bit of recognition this festive period could go a long way.
When working remotely or furloughed, this year it’s likely we won’t have the chance to pop by someone’s workstation and say thank you or even drop off a card.
It could be as simple as a personalised thank you message, a short video or a quick call to say thank you. It could be a personalised Ecard to recognise the hard work of everyone in helping your company through a difficult year.
However you do it, whether it’s for your remote workers or furloughed staff, let everyone know you’re thinking of them this Christmas and that you appreciate all their hard work and patience.
You could even hand out monetary rewards like gift vouchers for example as a thank you. This can be done easily through a reward and recognition platform.
Keep up the festive spirit this year
HR have had it all to do this year. Keeping up employee morale throughout 2020 has been a huge challenge and doing the same over the festive period will be a challenge too.
If you’re a part of your HR team, use this festive period to avoid burnout and spread some festive cheer. If you’re not a part of your company’s HR team, keep them in mind over Christmas and chip in with your own festive fun ideas!
Christmas might be a little different this year but there’s still lots of festive cheer to be had!