Throwing the perfect office party can be challenging. You need to provide something for everyone, and fun social event ideas need to be new and different. There may be a party once a year and going beyond guests’ and employees’ expectations goes a long way.
Let us point you in the right direction and help engage your guests at your year-end events. Try these fun ideas to get the party started:
1. Create a theme, and make everyone participate
Once you have a party theme set the party revolves around it. This can include décor, a catchy slogan, activities and games, invitations, food and beverages, and even costumes. The best costume always wins the best prize right? More on prize draws in a bit.
2. Make sure the activities are engaging
Make sure everyone is involved. Improving employee engagement is profitable, increases productivity and wellbeing. Whether this means creating a stronger bond between employees or having them learn something new, make sure that as many people are engaged as possible.
3. Give souvenirs that are useful and in-style, wow your employees and make sure they will use it
Office or year-end parties are the perfect occasions to hand out corporate gifts and souvenirs. Customizing gifts with company colours, a logo, or a personal touch also goes a long way.
Make sure however that they are practical and stylish so they end up being used much more often and can be an effective marketing tool for your company. In the end, your employees and guests will associate a positive and fun moment with them.
4. Give out prizes that everyone desires, so your employees will be proud to share the experience with their friends and family
Bringing a prize home from a company event makes the event much more memorable and can significantly increase your employees’ motivation. Whether they win the activity through games or through a lucky draw, you can make sure everybody is a winner and walks home with a small token of appreciation on their way out.
5. Give Back to the Community
Put an altruistic spin on your holiday party by using it as an opportunity to help other people out. Take your employees out to volunteer as a group for a few hours to do community work. You may find inspiration here: https://www.volunteermatch.org/ Afterwards, take your team out for a casual dinner or drinks. Getting out and doing some good in the world will help your employees bond and get into the holiday spirit much better than another Secret Santa gift exchange at the office will.
6. Use a lucky draw system to make the prize drawing session more intense!
The days of drawing a number out of a hat are over. If winning a prize isn’t already exciting enough, you can always use a digital lucky draw application to enhance the experience. Lucky draw systems can be customized to generate one or more random winners. This can be a visual, high-tech, transparent and suspenseful way of doing draws. Contact us to learn more about digital lucky draws.
7. Pick the day before a holiday, or offer a day off the next day
Socializing, engaging in activities can be quite draining. Whether it’s a hungover morning-after or some extra time to wind down and relax, make sure your employees are in fighting-form when they return to work. pssst: they’ll probably appreciate it just as much as the party!
8. Make the check-in process innovative, use a guest list app and invite your employees and guests in style!
Simplify the event planning and streamline your resources. Using a guest list app to invite, keep track and check-in your employees makes it easier for you to plan and also for attendees to RSVP for your event. Use a mobile-optimized one-click RSVP system and check-in guests digitally at the event. All checked-in guests can then automatically participate in the digital lucky draw.
Central Pacific is a Hong Kong based event technology company. We provide innovative solutions for guest list management, entry management, and guest engagement solutions (e.g. lucky draw and live polling). Contact our event technology specialists to receive a free consultation for your next event.