With teams becoming increasingly global, team-building events like holiday parties are harder to host now than ever. Here are some virtual team holiday party ideas that can help you bond with your coworkers online.
1. Holiday Bingo
Celebrate the holidays with Virtual Holiday Bingo as a fun icebreaker and conversation starter, helping coworkers and partygoers get to know each other.
To play Zoom holiday party Bingo, it’s best to start by splitting participants into breakout rooms for smaller group discussions where people feel more comfortable participating. However, playing in the main room can also work.
There are many free bingo boards you can find online that are designed for specific holidays. You can also make your own cards to customize them to your team and company. For example, if you all live in NYC, you might write “Already visited the Rockefeller tree this year.” Make sure to be inclusive, though — be sure your card’s prompts are relatable for all teammates so no one feels left out.
2. Ugly Sweater Competition
Ugly, gaudy sweaters are core to the holiday spirit, so hosting an ugly sweater competition is a great way to bring people together. Here are some tips to hosting this holiday tradition successfully:
- Gaudy Invitations: Send out an email blast to your team letting them know they should rummage through their closets for their best ugly sweater. Make your invitation gaudy and showy, so they know the mood you’re looking to set.
- Festive Cocktails: Before the party, encourage people to pick up festive drinks or send out a themed cocktail recipe to try out for the party.
- Zoom’s Spotlight Feature: The Spotlight feature on Zoom lets each person have their time to shine. You can ask them to talk about the sweater and why they picked it, or you could just give them some holiday-themed icebreaker questions.
- Vote: Since it’s a competition, you have to ask everyone to cast their vote for the ugliest holiday sweater. You could use Zoom’s polling feature, send out a Google Form, or just have each guest privately message you with their vote.
- Prizes: Finally, make sure you have a prize for the winner. It could be a simple gift card for Amazon or Starbucks, or you can get creative with your choice. It often helps to let people know that there will be prizes ahead of time so you can encourage participation.
3. Virtual Holiday Gift Exchanges
Everyone loves getting gifts, so a gift exchange should be at the top of your list of virtual holiday party ideas for work.
You could set this virtual event up as a Secret Santa — anonymously gifting a random recipient. Every employee gets randomly paired with a coworker by an online generator, and then they have to buy that colleague a present of a certain maximum value. You can make your online Secret Santa more fun by asking people to drop clues about their identities before the big revelation.
You can also try Gift Guess — participants each buy a mystery present and creatively wrap it to disguise it. In turns, each person holds their gift in front of their camera and lets everyone else guess what it is. Whoever guesses right first can keep the prize. Participants can mail out their gifts afterwards.
A third option is to make the event an auction. During your Zoom session, host an auction where people can bid for each item using Zoom’s ‘raise hand’ feature. The gift goes to the highest bidder. You can also post comments in the chat box to track each winner.
4. Virtual Holiday Trivia
Trivia is a great team building activity that people love to take part in. You can run a holiday-themed trivia contest over video call, with prize-winners getting first dibs on the gift pile. Once someone wins and picks their prize, they sit out of the game until everyone else has gotten a gift.
This kind of virtual holiday party game also works well for larger groups, since you can split people into teams.
You can also use visual elements to make your holiday pub quiz more interactive. For example, make a slideshow with your questions that you can present on your call.
5. Cookie Decorating
Decorating sugar cookies is a fun way to let people in smaller teams show their creativity. Send each person some cookies and decoration options — or give them a budget to buy their own — and have them join the call.
Then, set a certain amount of time and let everyone have fun. At the end, use the Spotlight feature to let everyone present their design.
6. Festive Talent Show
Give team members a way to showcase their hidden talents. Send out an email inviting volunteers to showcase a talent in three minutes or less. Be welcoming and appreciative of everyone who is comfortable with possibly making a fool of themselves in front of the team, so they know they’re in a safe space. Then, start the call, use the Spotlight feature to give each volunteer center-stage, and let them show their skills.
7. Gingerbread House Decorating Contest
If you know some of your team members are competitive, a gingerbread house decorating contest is a fun way to bring in that spirit as one of the classic holiday traditions.
Target and Amazon offer easy-to-assemble gingerbread kits that you can mail to employees ahead of the call, or you can give them a budget and let them buy whatever kit they find most fun.
Then, either have them work on their gingerbread house before the party or set up a live-action challenge to find who can put together the most impressive structure in a given time.
At the end, take a vote on the most creative house, the tastiest-looking house, and any other prize categories you think would be fun. The winners can get a special treat, like company swag or a small gift.
8. Holiday Charades
Charades is a fun game that’s easy to set up. Just plan ahead with some holiday-themed words and divide your group into two teams. People may feel sheepish or nervous at first, but as the game goes on, they’ll open up and everyone will get into the fun.
9. Holiday Icebreaker Questions
Now that teams are spreading across the globe, it’s possible that many team members don’t know each other. Virtual holiday parties are a great way to change this. Holiday icebreaker questions are a good way to kick off a holiday party so people have a clearer impression of each other when they get put on teams together.
Some virtual holiday icebreakers you can try are:
- Did you grow up with snow? If so, what was your favorite thing to do on a snow day?
- What’s your favorite holiday gift you’ve ever received?
- Share your favorite festive food!
- Finish this sentence: “My favorite part of the holiday season is…”
10. Virtual Holiday Happy Hour
Happy hours are a great setting for team bonding. If you can’t do one in person, then recreate the experience virtually. Invite the team for a casual virtual holiday party, ask them to fix their favorite drink, set up some small, fun holiday team-building activities, and let the party go where the mood takes it.
11. Holiday Buzzwords
Buzzwords is a fun game to play in the background of your company holiday parties — just put together a holiday-themed word list and send it around to your team. Each member can pick one word, and then, once they hear it, they have to do a specific action like taking a sip of their drink or waving their hands in the air.
12. Holiday Game Show
Virtual holiday game shows take some setup work on your end, but they’re a lot of fun for all participants. You can put together a classic trivia night, an office who’s who, or a team-building treasure trail with small prizes on the line to spur people’s competitive spirit.
There are free online tools available to set up boards for many classic game shows, like Jeopardy or Family Feud, so you can give team members a little bit of nostalgia as well.
13. Virtual Caroling Karaoke
Caroling is a fun way to get people to let loose — and it can be just as fun virtually. Just send out sign-ups ahead of time and show up ready to belt out your best renditions of “Jingle Bells” or “Frosty the Snowman.”
Tips for a Successful Virtual Party for Your Remote Team
For all these ideas, here are some things that people who lead a distributed team should keep in mind when you run your virtual party:
- Plan engaging activities
- Pick a user-friendly video conferencing platform like Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams, which everyone is comfortable with from hybrid team meetings
- Try interactive tools, like Kahoot!, for interactive games
- Encourage interaction and participation
- Celebrate diverse traditions, especially if you run a global team
Benefits of Having Your Remote Virtual Holiday Party at Industrious
Office parties are a great way to get your team together. If you work with a remote team, try these virtual meeting holiday party ideas to maintain that sense of camaraderie. If you or any team member don’t have an office space, you can host a remote virtual holiday party at Industrious, with access to high-speed WiFi and private meeting rooms with video-conferencing setups perfect for your ideal party.