If you’re planning to celebrate Christmas with all your employees gathered in a video conference, it’s quite likely that you’re wondering how to make it fun! Since March, we’ve all been in more than one meeting on Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Skype, and Zoom, and let’s be honest… They weren’t all fun and games. But they can be! You just have to come up with engaging and entertaining surprises. We know it might seem difficult but believe us when we say: it’s not! Read on to discover some of our favorite ideas for virtual Christmas parties that will awaken the Christmas spirit!
Run a traditional Christmas presents giveaway for your employees
Raffling attractive prizes is one of the most classic ways to generate excitement at Christmas parties: weekend getaways, Christmas hampers, gadgets, and other gifts, often provided by suppliers or company clients. Normally, each employee draws a number and then waits in excited anticipation to find out if their number will be drawn from the jar or Santa hat!
But at Easypromos we have a different way to do it… Already three years ago we organized an online giveaway. We shared the direct link with all participants (leaflets, posters, etc) so that they could access the promo with the mobile phones, fill out the registration form – name and email – and enter the draw.
And this is also a great idea for a virtual Christmas party! Share the link with all employees prior to the event and encourage them to sign up to enter the draw. Once all attendees are present in the video call you can simply access the Easypromos platform, share your screen, and run the draw right in front of your colleagues. In addition, you can present the winners with an animated video, which comes with a countdown with visual and sound effects. Raffling more than one prize? Each award will be presented with its corresponding winner. The Entry Form Giveaway allows you to raffle up to eight different prizes.
Christmas prize wheel: let your employees try their luck
Do you want to raffle many different prizes? Using an online prize wheel is a great way to distribute multiple gifts. It allows you to randomly select winners of Christmas gifts but in an interactive and innovative way. Share a direct link with all attendees via chat or email and encourage them to spin the wheel! It’s a great way to boost excitement among all attendees of your virtual Christmas party.
Maybe you’re interested in organizing a Christmas prize wheel for your virtual holiday party but with a different dynamic? Edit the wheel to display your employees’ names instead of the prizes and share the screen. Announce what prize you’re raffling and wait for the exciting screams when the wheel slows down and the arrow stops on the lucky winner’s name! Take a look at the example of a name wheel prepared for a Christmas party karaoke.
Live giveaway for your virtual Christmas party
Another slightly more advanced option is to ask all employees attending your virtual Christmas party to answer a few questions when signing up for the Christmas prize draw. The Live Giveaway generates a lot of rivalry and excitement as users battle against each other, live.
- The organizer shares their screen and displays the welcome page of the giveaway, with visual and sound effects.
- All party attendees access the promotion by scanning a QR code with their mobile or typing the promotion link in their mobile phone’s browser.
- The participants enter the giveaway microsite and have between 1 and 5 minutes (specified by the organizer) to register and answer all questions.
- Once the time is up, the screen displays the correct answers and the number of finalists. But when it comes to Christmas parties we recommend you enter all the employees into the final prize draw – at the end of the day… it’s Christmas 😉
- And the countdown begins: 3, 2, 1 and… you know who the winners are!
This dynamic is a bit more complex but you can prepare it all in advance. Once you click the “Start” button the process begins and you don’t have to do anything else.
Do you want to find out more about the Live Giveaway? Watch the video.
Virtual Christmas party: List Giveaway for all participants
If you prefer to run a simpler version of a raffle for all employees attending your online Christmas party, you can easily organize a List Giveaway.
The application allows you to upload a list of all participants, create prizes, and randomly choose winners. As the organizer, you can finalize the giveaway prior to the event and save the winner selection process as a video. Then, once all attendees have gathered in the video conference, you can share your screen and present the winners. This way you minimalize the stress for you as the organizer, but you still get to generate exciting moments in the digital Christmas dinner.
Team building Christmas quiz
Another great way to energize your team during a virtual Christmas dinner is to organize a Knowledge Quiz. Share a direct link to your trivia a few hours or days before the event and get your team into the Christmas spirit. Then, show the correct answers and ranking during the event and assign prizes to the winners.
Not sure what quiz to create? Here are just some ideas:
- Knowledge Quiz about Christmas. Find out what your employees know about Christmas traditions, Christmas carols, festive movies, etc.
- Corporate trivia. Create questions about previous Christmas parties and ask questions like “How won a Christmas hamper last year?”.
- A “remember when” quiz to look back at great memories and add to the Christmas nostalgia.
- “Get to know your colleagues” trivia. Create questions about your employees, their likes, and their hidden talents.
Before the pandemic, we used to all sit in the same room, looking at the same screen. This year we’ll be in the comfort of our own homes, with our own screens, but we can still be looking at the same content. And this will definitely create some new memories!
Another way to engage your audience with a quiz is to share it during the Christmas call. Ask participants to answer all the questions during the event or assign each employee with a different question and encourage them to share their screen while they’re attempting to get the right answer.
The following example shows how our CEO used a Knowledge Quiz to celebrate his 40th birthday. He organized a trivia with funny questions and anecdotes and challenged us to give correct answers. You can do the same for your Christmas party, but online.
Make sure you plan how you’re going to launch the quiz and when your event attendees will participate. It might seem like a lot of work but it’s not! And it’s definitely worth the effort!
Celebrate Christmas with interactive games
Was your company often organizing board games afternoons or escape room evenings? You can still do it but this time online! There are many different applications for creating fun and entertaining games – including our branded mini-games.
All you have to do is customize your game and activate it. Then share a direct link with your employees so that they can participate from their computers or smartphones. As the host, you can share your screen and display the ranking page so that everyone can see how their opponents are doing.
What’s the best idea for a Christmas party game?
- Create a Memory or Puzzle game with a Christmas theme or with pictures of your team members. Give participants a few tries to improve their score and the overall experience. Once everyone participates, give an award to the best player or raffle a prize among all employees.
- You can organize an online escape room! All you have to do is launch a Multi-Stage promotion, divide your team into groups, and share a link with all participants. Each group will have to create their own call and one member of each team will share their screen so that everyone can participate in solving the challenge. Success guaranteed! Once all groups complete the game, connect everyone once again in the general video call to reward prizes, and comment on the game.
Christmas contests for employees
Contests are another popular theme in Christmas parties. Employees show off their skills in many different fields like cooking. Here’s a great suggestion from us: Christmas photo contests.
You might already know that photo, and video competitions have been very popular over the last years. Easypromos allows you to organize customized contests where people participate by sharing their pictures or videos along with their name and contact information. In addition, we have an anti-fraud system that controls all incoming votes and prevents malpractice. The best thing about Easypromos contests is that you don’t need any programming experience to launch them. And they’re mobile responsive! Here are just a couple of ideas for your corporate Christmas contests:
- Baking contest. We all love Christmas bake-offs! Working from home, some of us have more time on our hands. Encourage your employees to use it for baking! Ask them to prepare their favorite cookies and cakes to then share pictures of their creations in a photo contest app. Ask your employees to vote for their favorite submissions and choose the confectioner of the year!
- Christmas photo booth. Create a digital photo booth with branded frames and stickers. Invite employees to decorate their selfies and share them through the PhotoFun application.
Wondering how to make use of the pictures for your virtual Christmas party? Share your screen, play some festive music, and display all the submitted pictures with your Christmas party attendees. Make sure you use the full-screen mode!
If you like our ideas but you need some more information, don’t worry. You can contact our Support Team – they’re ready to answer any questions!
We hope you liked our virtual Christmas party ideas! We’ll definitely use some of them for our own virtual Christmas party. We hope you’ll enjoy your Christmas party, even if it’s in the online world!
