Just because your company has migrated to the online world, doesn’t mean you have to say goodbye to festive get-togethers. The holiday season is the perfect time to bring remote teams together to unwind, socialize, and celebrate a successful year.
However, hosting a virtual holiday party isn’t as simple as sending out an invite to a video conference and hoping your remote employees attend.
If you want those virtual holiday parties to go without a hitch, you’ll need to think carefully about what kind of festivities activities you’ll be including and how you’re going to incentivize your events.
How To Host a Virtual Holiday Party
Taking your holiday parties online can save you a lot of hassle. However, hosting a festive get-together that everyone’s going to enjoy and engage with can be a challenge if this is your first time celebrating the season with virtual teams.
Need help planning a virtual Christmas party that your staff will be talking about all year? We’ve got you covered. See our library of team meeting templates here, including our new virtual Christmas activity.
Choose a Suitable Time and Date
If you want to ensure maximum attendance, make sure you’re hosting virtual holiday parties within working hours. What’s more, consider that people’s schedules tend to get a little crazy around this time of year.
Many of your remote employees will be heading off to see family and friends, so it’s worth scheduling your event a few days before your company downs tools for the festive break.
However, don’t let those virtual holiday parties get in the way of any urgent deadlines. To ensure everyone has fun and can really unwind, set the date for after those time-sensitive projects have been delivered.
After all, you don’t want to start the new year with a full inbox of emails from unhappy clients.
If you’re hoping to attract big numbers, make sure you let everyone know your plans with plenty of time to spare. If you’re planning an out-of-hours event, bear in mind that many people are going to be tight for time as they shop for gifts and make last-minute plans for their own holiday get-togethers.
Choose the Right Conferencing Platform
For a fun holiday event, you’ll need a reliable conferencing platform. If your company works with remote employees and dispersed teams, choose a browser-based platform that will allow you to invite hundreds of participants, wherever they’re working from. Accessibility is also important. With a platform like Gloww, anyone with an internet connection can join in the fun, even if they’re signing in from a mobile device.
To make your virtual party as festive as possible, you can play around with Christmas-inspired themes and seasonal artwork. Need help putting together a session layout? Go with a platform with plenty of event-ready templates you can use. That way you can even host a virtual happy hour or even a virtual team trivia too.
Interactive elements for your presentation are also essential. Add polls and surveys to keep everyone engaged and add online party games to spice things up. You can even think about adding HD videos and live music. Perfect if you want to get everyone in the mood with a holiday playlist.
Send Out Those Invitations
There’s no point in planning an amazing holiday party if you forget to send out invitations. Once you’ve created a festive session layout with Gloww, you can create a link that you can share with your employees.
To ensure as many people as possible attend, make sure you’re sending this link out ahead of time.
If you’ve planned team-building activities and games like Secret Santa, you’ll want to have a clear idea of who’s attending. Ask attendees to respond with confirmation that they’ll be attending so your event goes without a hitch on the day.
How To Make a Virtual Holiday Party Fun
Christmas parties aren’t for everyone, but even the staunchest critic will have a hard time not cracking a smile when taking part in an ugly sweater contest or holiday gift exchange. If this is your first time hosting a party like this, start planning early by testing the waters with your employees.
Ask for holiday games and playlist suggestions. If you want to make the event more personal, encourage attendees to send in festive photos and videos that you can use to personalize your virtual session.
How To Get Employees to Attend
One of the simplest ways to ensure employees attend your event is to let them know about it in advance. If you haven’t scheduled your party within working hours, you can’t count on availability. If you haven’t received many RSVPs, make a point to remind employees in your next internal newsletter.
Virtual Christmas parties are great for team building and promoting a culture of togetherness. If you want to increase attendance, consider incentivizing the event.
This can include offering prizes for certain games. You can even bring in old favorites like Secret Santa. Rather than send out an invite via email, why not send out a festive gift box to your employees? It’s a great way of letting them know you value them but also serves as gentle encouragement to engage with your virtual event.
Virtual Holiday Party Games
Need some suggestions for virtual holiday party ideas? With Gloww, there are plenty of ways you can stage a seasonal event that will put any office-based party to shame.
Holiday Polls
Polls are a great way of encouraging attendees to engage and interact. With Gloww’s polls and surveys, you can ask your employees to rate their favorite holiday movies, festive foods, and more.
Virtual Whiteboard Decorating
With Gloww’s digital whiteboard feature, your virtual party guests can get creative. For a quick and easy holiday game, ask attendees to draw Christmas scenes and seasonal staples. Think gingerbread houses, candy canes, and snowmen.
Holiday Music Challenge
One of the best things about Christmas is the music. With Gloww, there are plenty of music-inspired party ideas you can bring into the mix. Get your employees to showcase their singing talents as they belt out Christmas classics from the likes of Maria Carey, Bing Crosby, and Nat King Cole.
Yes or No Holiday Edition
This quickfire game is always great at parties. Frame each game around the festive season and see how quickly your employees take to guess the answer. You can even incentivize it by offering prizes for the one who guesses the answer with the fewest questions.
Holiday Spin the Wheel
Gloww’s Spin the Wheel feature can be used for all manner of virtual party ideas. Use this random picker to select individuals to reveal a hidden talent or answer an on-the-spot question.
Alternatively, simply dish out a prize to whoever the wheel lands on.
Virtual Pictionary
Pictionary is a Christmas classic in most homes. With Gloww, you can use the Scribble feature to set holiday-themed drawing challenges.
Holiday Charades
Charades is another Christmas crowd-pleaser. With Gloww, use the Reactions feature to host a game of virtual charades. To make things a little easier for everyone, make sure the answers are all centered around festive themes. If you want to stay on top of all the holidays, see our Employee Engagement Calendar too.
Festive Emoji Challenge
The emoji challenge is a relatively new party game, but it’s quickly becoming a firm favorite. With Gloww’s Word Count feature, you can get participants to drop hints in emoji form, with everyone else having to guess the answer. Keep it seasonal with festive phrases, holiday movie titles, Christmas songs, and more.
FAQs
How do you make a virtual holiday party fun for everybody?
Some people have no trouble getting in the holiday mood, while others are a little more reserved. If you’re dealing with a healthy mix of party animals and wallflowers, make sure your party schedule has something for everyone.
Try and utilize polls and surveys to provide the less outgoing of your employees with ways to interact.
How do I set up a virtual online party or happy hour?
Setting up an online holiday party with Gloww couldn’t be easier. Simply log in with your email, select a ready-made template, and personalize it with live apps, games, and your media. Once you’re done, create an invitation link and share it with your participants.
How do I handle an employee who refused to attend an online company party?
Sadly, not everyone is going to be in the party mood. What’s more, it’s not a great idea to make attendance mandatory. To grease the wheels, think about sending out a seasonal care package to your employees ahead of the session itself.
This, combined with a few gentle reminders via your internal newsletter, should be all that’s needed to encourage them to join in the fun on the big day.
Start Planning Your Virtual Holiday Party Today
Worried that you can’t host a memorable festive party now that your company is working online? Think again. With Gloww, you can stage a seasonal get-together that your employees will be talking about for years to come.
Take your pick from readymade themes if you need a little helping hand or start from scratch and customize your session layout with festive artwork images and video content. Eager to add some interactive elements?
Whether it’s instant polls or immersive games, you’ll find plenty of live apps to spice up your virtual holiday party.
You can get started with Gloww free today. If you’re looking to upgrade and explore some of our premium features, take a look at our pricing plans. Do you still have questions about the capabilities of Gloww? Drop us a query using the online contact form.
