How to Plan and Host a Wonderful Work Christmas Party
Kep Points
- Early Planning Ensures Success: Start months ahead to secure quality venues, caterers, and entertainment, avoiding last-minute stress.
- Set a Clear Budget: Allocate funds for venue, food, entertainment, and decorations, leaving room for unexpected costs to stay organized.
- Engaging Themes & Activities: A unique theme and interactive games create memorable experiences, enhancing team bonding and festive spirit.
When the most wonderful time of the year comes around, many workplaces expect the employer to host a Christmas party.
These can be great ways for staff to have fun, socialize, and get to know each other better in a less formal environment.
However, they can also take a great deal of planning.
There are food, drinks, the venue, decorations, entertainment, and games to think about.
If you’ve never organized one before, it can be difficult to know where to start. But you don’t need to worry.
This short guide contains all the tips you need for a fabulous festive celebration.
Plan early
Let’s start with the most important tip of all: do not leave it all until the last minute!
Remember that you will be competing against every other office in your local area for venues, caterers, and entertainers.
Book them early to ensure you don’t end up with the worst of the bunch.
And by early, we are talking about months, not weeks ahead.
The most popular venues tend to be booked up by the end of September, so you will want to start checking out venues around the middle of the year, even if Christmas feels light years away.
Budget
Your venue, and in fact the entire scope of your Christmas party, will be determined by how much you can spend on it. This means that you’ll need to set your budget before you even book the venue.
This is easy enough if you’re being allocated a set amount of the company’s funds to spend on the party.
But it can be trickier to know how much you’ve got to spend if you’re expecting employees to contribute since you don’t know how many will attend the party.
In that case, an average of the previous few years’ attendance can be a helpful guide.
Once you know how much you can spend overall, you should break down how much of that you want to spend on the venue, food and drinks, entertainment, and decorations.
It is also wise to leave yourself some surplus funds in case of any unexpected complications.
Pick a theme
Work Christmas parties can get a bit samey if you just opt for the generic Christmas theme every year.
One way to keep them fresh and exciting is to go for something more specific.
For example, you could theme your party around a timeless festive movie, such as Love Actually, or a story like The Grinch or A Christmas Carol.
Picking a theme can also help you make other decisions, such as the music playlist, dress code, decorations, and food.
Nail the decorations
While you can’t go wrong with some classic Christmas Baubles hanging from a nice tree, it might make things more interesting if your decorations fit with either your theme or your company.
For example, if you’re in the tech industry you could go for a new smart Christmas tree or a fibre optic one.
Another good way to mix up the decorations is to invite everyone to bring along a decoration of their own for the tree.
Plan engaging entertainment and party games
Music is obviously essential at any Christmas party, but that doesn’t mean that you need to book a DJ or band. There are lots of other entertainment options available, from magicians to comedians and much more.
Based on your knowledge of your group’s demographics and interests, try to choose something that will keep most of them entertained.
No Christmas party can be complete without games either, and while charades and karaoke always go down well, there are many more exciting choices.
Company parties can be great for team building, and a good way to take advantage of this is by choosing some games where attendees have to work together.
Solving a murder mystery or escape room challenge are popular modern options for this, but you could also try a gingerbread house build-off or even a Christmas-themed pub quiz.
Don’t neglect transport
This isn’t something that you, as the employer, necessarily have to organise.
If your party doesn’t start until a few hours after work ends, if it takes place on a weekend, or if your staff want to go home and change first, then it is reasonable to expect anyone who is attending to make their own way there.
But in that case, you should still check in with everybody when you see them at work to make sure they have the correct time and location details and a plan for getting there themselves.
If you are planning to serve alcohol, you may wish to dissuade employees from driving there themselves in order to make sure that your party is as safe as possible.
However, if a large group is going straight to the party from the office, then the most convenient solution might be to hire a minibus.
If it’s a smaller group, a taxi or ridesharing service should suffice. You could offer to coordinate these.
Conclusion
Once you’ve got all of the above covered, all that is left is to have a great time at your party. Remember to get some group pictures to commemorate your fun festive evening too.
