5 ideas for your next office party: xmas edition

This season is a pain in the backside for organisers who are left with the rod of responsibility on behalf of everyone else. Come December you’ll be Organising the parties, the logistics, the secret Santa’s and everything in between. Animals, babies, wisdom and salvation: Merry Christmas. My head hurts. Now time to plan the office Christmas party with lost careers, relationships and dignity marching us straight onto Santa's naughty list.

Before you confine yourself to warm beer, half arsed tinsel spreads and Dave from accounts acting weird, we’ve put together a few off the wall suggestions instead.

Work Christmas party ideas incoming, but first: What is Reddit saying?

Before we indulge in what TO DO, allow me to highlight some examples of what NOT TO DO. provided in part by the lovely community of Reddit.

“I once made my special Eggnog recipe and accidentally got the entire office (-35 people) nearly blackout. A number of people had to crash at my place; some carpooled. The next day consisted of car roulette with lots of hungover people!”

According to Redditters, it’s not uncommon for employees to decide to quit rather than face up to the mess they made at the Christmas party!

“Big Carol, head of HR. She said the best she could do was Monday night at the Wetherspoons in Liverpool Street Station. She ordered two rounds and then ran off with the company card. (her train home was around 25 steps from the bar… coincidence?) She also missed my drink on the second round, so I only got one pint... 

Everyone who was there due to a sense of obligation immediately went home. About 8 or 9 of us stayed on - later that evening we’d be kicked out of a Shoreditch restaurant for trying to start a karaoke (not a service they offered), kicked out of another bar for having a wrestling competition on the dance floor; then kicked out of the Ace hotel for racing two wheelie chairs up and down a corridor. Steve, who ran accounts literally never came back into work again!

And of course, there's always one person guaranteed to start drama!

“A former employee showed up and was aggressively trying to sell drugs, just generally being a nuisance. Another guy hit him a few times; the Police were called. Good times, all around great success!”

Moving on… 

Our top five unusual suggestions for an office Christmas party

Paintball

The merit of Paintball resides firmly in having the opportunity to live out rouge fantasies of shooting various co-workers who may have wronged you in the past. Kapow!! “Oops, sorry.” lol

Not even wronged you, just frustrated you maybe?

We could even suggest this is some form of corporate Christmas party therapy session. It’s good to clear the air. Remove the toxins and deal with frustrations. Come back after Christmas relaxed having previously shot your boss in the back with no consequences!

It’s not every day you get to shoot your boss. It could get mucky, but there are definitely worse ideas than blowing the entire budget on a mass company shoot up! A paintball party might just be the office Christmas idea that saves the place.

Christmas Escape Room

Featuring Christmas storylines and themes. An escape room involves locking the whole team in a room requiring them to solve a series of puzzles within a timeframe in order to escape the room. Typically finding a key in the process!

The escape room has merits because it requires genuine teamwork in order to escape. It’s a fantastic way to encourage the team to bond whilst celebrating the season in the process! And it forces them to talk about something other than work, which we all know is the default at the work Christmas party.

We might be fans of escape rooms at Colltiv. It’s not the first time we’ve mentioned them. read about escape rooms in our Hen and Stag blogs.

If you don’t like the idea of being trapped in a room, a great alternative is a treasure hunt. I once did a Christmas themed one in London which took me down little allies and streets I would never have otherwise seen. You can split into teams and race to finish, if you want to add some friendly competition into your Christmas

Bubble Football

Bubble football is a five-a-side football game played completely in zorbs! What are zorbs? Essentially giant bubbles that users wear, designed for risk free bashing and crashing into one another.

It’s also probably the most memorable and outright insane one of our office xmas party ideas. I guarantee that your team won’t be quick in forgetting a round of bubble football!

Also another opportunity to crash into that colleague that’s irritated you all year without landing you with a disciplinary.

Ugly Jumper Contest

Encourage the whole team to don their worst, ugliest and absolute itchiest Christmas monstrosities. Awarding prizes that are totally at your discretion in categories such as…

• Best/Worst jumper
• Most offensive jumper
• Best Christmas Tree impression
• Most likely to have been knitted by mum!

You don’t even have to reveal the categories until the day, getting people to vote when they arrive!

It’s a fun way to encourage people to be a bit less serious around Christmas. It’s also a relatively cheap suggestion, freeing up the remaining budget for a meal out, and/or the pub?

Transform the office

Assuming that you have the office space - this definitely isn’t one for the remote workers out there. Find a way to hire catering, drinks, games and take the party to the office instead! You can hire a catering company, decorate the place and essentially transform your office into its own Christmas winter wonderland!

It’s a bit on the pricey side, and would require a lot of forward planning, but if executed properly, it could be the most memorable office Christmas party you’ve ever had!

Removing the cost of venue hire and ensuring any mania remains within the walls of the office. It could be worth considering as an alternative to going out.

One Christmas, the company I worked for even hired a giant Rodeo Bull. That was the most fun I've ever had at a Christmas party! I don’t think our team has ever laughed so much.

We don’t all get a big office party, right?

With more and more people working remotely, far away from other colleagues, or those self employed, we don’t all get to have a xmas office party extravaganza. So why not reach out to the remote workers and self-employed in your local area and chip in for a Christmas party of your own.

“It will be so complicated to collect the money” you say?

Not with Collctiv. Set up a pot, collect money in minutes and keep it all separate from your bank account.

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Since 2019 Collctiv has helped over 2.4 million people from 175 countries come together by making it simple for Organisers to collect money from groups. Whether it's gifts for colleagues, group holidays or grassroots sports teams - Sign up today and start bringing people together!