5 Great Ideas For Your Company Christmas Party

There’s no better way to sum up a financial year than with a year-end Christmas Party. A good night of fun is especially needed after a crazy year (which is, every year) of good times and bad times – the endless nasty client episodes (a nightmare especially if you’re in the events industry) and nights everyone slogged overtime for the sales pitch, but also the joyous times when sleepless nights and midnight coffee paid off when said pitch helped your firm successfully clinch the project.

Whether or not you have an extravagant party expense to work with is completely irrelevant. The whole idea is to gather your colleagues together as a family for a day/night, away from work and their daily routines. Simply put – it has to be fun, it has to be engaging, and it has to bring people together.

1. Theme

Image Credit: www.tipjunkie.com

With approximately 2 weeks to Christmas from now, are your colleagues talking about the big party yet? If they aren’t, something is terribly wrong! It is then in your job scope (yes, you) as the party planner to interest them and make it the top discussion topic of the pantry!

If you’ve been following our blog for quite a while, then you may have already known what we are about to suggest. Invent a theme for your guests! Why? Simply because it helps to create buzz and excitement even weeks before the event. Whether is it an 80’s affair or a masquerade party, a theme will definitely have your colleagues looking forward to the party, instead of having them feel obliged to show up because it is a ‘company event’

Have some extra budget to spare? Use it to buy a big Christmas present to be awarded to the Best Dressed Employee to reward him/her for his/her spontaneity! Not sure how to go about it pulling off a themed party successfully? We have you covered with our guide to organizing a themed party and some theme ideas so you don’t stress yourself out.

2. Entertainment

Image Credit: www.rogerlapin.co.uk

The key to event planning is essentially retaining what worked and ditching what didn’t. So if you caught your own colleagues yawning during Passing the Parcel or Taboo last December, chances are those games are not working very well for them – and that’s okay, just don’t make the mistake of creating a similar program this year! Otherwise, you’re going to be seeing a couple of your colleagues who’d rather play Angry Bird on their iPhone.

This is always the biggest headache of the party, on top of all other miscellaneous and logistical worries. So if you find yourself with zero clue of how to keep your guests entertained, we do have a solution and no, it does not involve having you juggling three balls on a unicycle in a ridiculous costume. There’s another way around that called outsourcing.

Image Credit: stevenscaffardi.blogspot.com

Think out of the box and look for alternative ways to make your colleagues happy at the company party. Invite a stand-up comedian, hire freelance performers to do their tricks, put up photo-booths and even casino-styled games. See? There are many ways to engage your guests without bending over backwards yourself.

3. Guest-list

Image Credit: www.lukeroxas.com

Who said that a company party is only open to employees? With parties or any other social event, the general rule is often – the more the merrier! No, we don’t mean that you should invite any Tom, Dick, or Harry to the party because that would be really weird. But have you thought about expanding your guest list to have a good mix of your own staff, their family or plus-ones, and your business associates?

Having a variety of guests at your party makes it more happening and exciting for everyone, and people can finally have conversations that isn’t shop-talk. By making it more of a social event than a company’s internal event, people are more likely to want to participate knowing that they can network and meet different people!

In fact, if your party is a large-scale, ballroom event and you are super confident that it’s going to be the party of the year, you can even invite journalists or bloggers! Since you are pulling a press-worthy stint, surely some publicity wouldn’t harm, would it?

4. Special activity

Want to make your party this year one to remember? Do something that has never been done before!

It is never clever to recreate this year’s party based on last year’s event outline because well, a party’s supposed to be loads of spontaneous fun, not a repetitive and predictable affair. So is it okay to open that document titled 2012 Christmas Party Template to copy the program outline? Absolutely not.

Making your event an activity in itself could be something you want to look at. When was the last time all the employees did something together that does not involve laptops and a projector screen? You can never go wrong with centering your Christmas party around an activity! It could be something as simple and casual as watching a movie in the theater, or it something refreshing like picking up a new skill together. For example, Palate Sensations is a venue that offers cooking classes in a casual atmosphere for groups to have fun! Such activities are a great ways to bond your colleagues and build camaraderie.

5. Venue

Image Credit: www.officeideas.net

It is a big no-no to hold your party in the office! Even though doing so would save you some cost, you would come to realize that spending some money on booking a venue will be all worth it! Especially since a company Christmas party is an entirely out-of-work event, it only makes sense that it should be held at a place where your employees and loosen up, relax completely, and enjoy Christmas together. Sick of always interacting with your colleagues in the comfort of your air conditioned offices? Opt for an outdoor venue to hold your party!

Your venue-hunting process may be rather tedious. But really, this is where we come into the picture.

Whether is it a bar, cafe, restaurant, gallery, ballroom, function rooms and even outdoor spaces, we have hundreds of venues from all categories, of different capacities and rental costs. With all the details an event-planner like you needs to know in one page, we’re pretty sure that We Are Spaces will be your last-stop in the process of venue-hunting!

 

Next Step: Find awesome event venues and spaces to rent in Singapore 

We are Spaces is a venue discovery platform for event planners. Browse from over 300 curated venues available for rent, filter spaces based on your specific requirements, and get quotes from multiple venues all from a single enquiry. Visit We Are Spaces to find your perfect venue today!

 

Marketing Executive (Editorial) for We Are Spaces. Economics/finance student who crunches numbers by day and stays up to write by night.

3 Comments

Leave a Reply