7 Ideas to Strengthen Your Hybrid Teams' Cohesion During the Holiday Season

Ho ho ho, Christmas is just around the corner 🎅. So it's the perfect time to plan fun activities and thereby strengthen your teams' cohesion. Christmas party, secret santa, advent calendar… There's no shortage of team-building ideas for the month of December! But with the rise of hybrid work, it isn't always easy to bring your employees together for activities like these.

To make your life easier, we've listed 7 examples of activities to strengthen your teams' cohesion during the holiday season, both in person and remotely (yes, both are possible!). These ideas are aimed at team managers, internal communication leads, and office managers, but also at employees who want to get involved in organizing this type of activity.

Follow the guide 👇

1. Organize a Christmas party

The Christmas party is probably one of the most eagerly awaited events by employees, but also one of the most unifying. You can organize it in person, planning a good meal and various activities (for example, a blind test, a photobooth, a prize draw, an escape game, a magic show, etc.). But it's also possible to adapt the Christmas party to a hybrid format, or even a fully digital one.

Here are a few activity ideas to plan for your hybrid Christmas party:

• Have a great meal delivered to all the employees who can't attend the party in person
• Offer a festive icebreaker over video conference to kick off the conversation at the start of the evening (for example, sharing a Christmas anecdote, their favorite Christmas movie, the most original Christmas gift they've ever received, etc.).
• Organize a contest for the best Christmas photo and have employees vote live (a video conferencing tool and a smartphone, and you're all set!).
• Run a quiz to test everyone's knowledge of Christmas, animating the exchanges in an interactive way (it's time to break out your best Christmas jokes 😉).
• Offer an online karaoke, giving employees the chance to add the songs of their choice to the playlist.

Torn between several activities? Have your employees vote via a post on your enterprise social network to gather everyone's opinion. It's a good way to involve them in organizing your Christmas party, and thereby make them want to take part on the big day.

2. Do a secret santa

The secret santa is also a great activity idea to strengthen your hybrid teams' cohesion during the holiday season. The concept: each employee gives a gift (of a value defined in advance) to one of their colleagues drawn at random. The gift can therefore be intended either for a colleague they interact with regularly, or for a colleague they don't know.

The draw and the gift exchange can take place either remotely or in person. The only difference being the delivery part to plan for employees working remotely (you'll therefore need to plan further ahead so everyone can receive their gift in time).

Another option: give a fully digital gift (for example, a gift card or a voucher for an activity), accompanied by a personalized note from the employee who gave it.

Once the gifts are received, you can then organize a video conference to unwrap them live, and let everyone thank their assigned Santa.

3. Hold an ugly Christmas sweater contest

We've all received a Christmas sweater at some point… that we can only wear at Christmas (thanks, grandma). Organizing an ugly Christmas sweater contest is therefore a great way to put that gift to good use!

No need for elaborate organization, you simply have to ask your hybrid teams to wear their ugliest Christmas sweater (or the kitschiest one) during one of their workdays (ideally on December 17, for National Ugly Christmas Sweater Day).

You can then plan a video conference so everyone can vote for their favorite Christmas sweater, then give a small reward to the winner. Santa hat, jingle-bell antlers, a keepsake photo frame, a box of chocolates… It's up to you to pick the gift that seems kitschiest to you, or to go for a more classic option.

Did you know? Talkspirit lets you run polls, share GIFs, and create breakout rooms during your video conferences. Just what you need to make your remote Christmas activities easier!

Read also: Strengthening company cohesion with Talkspirit: the Food Emotion case study

4. Create a virtual advent calendar

What if we told you it was possible to create a fully virtual advent calendar ? Unlike the traditional advent calendar, the virtual calendar is accessible to all employees, whether they're in the office or working remotely. It's therefore the ideal tool to strengthen hybrid team cohesion during the holiday season!

You can opt for different types of calendars, for example:

A calendar focused on internal communication

Use this calendar to share a fun or informative piece of content about your company every day or a topic related to your business (for example, a video, a quiz, an article, a podcast, an interview, etc.). Depending on the resources at your disposal, you can choose to share internal content (created by internal communication and/or employees) or external content, or a mix of both.

Read also: How to succeed in your internal communication while working remotely?

A surprise gift calendar

It works similarly to the traditional advent calendar: each day, an employee is drawn at random to open one of the calendar's boxes, and they receive the surprise in that box. It can be a piece of company swag, or a more classic Christmas gift (for example, a candle, a Christmas sweater, a power bank, a mug, cookies, etc.). You can also get your teams involved by inviting them to suggest gift ideas.

A challenge calendar

Do your employees love taking on new challenges? Starting December 1, invite them to take part in one challenge a day to win rewards. These challenges can take different forms. It could be a riddle to solve, a quiz on company culture, a contest for the best cake or the best-decorated desk, an online word game, or even a contest of famous Christmas-movie lines.

5. Decorate the offices

Boosting team cohesion at Christmas also comes down to decorating! Tree, baubles, garlands, candles, snowmen… The possibilities are endless! And the good news is that it's possible to decorate your office both in person and remotely.

In person, you can, for example, organize a workshop to decorate the tree, paint baubles, and make DIY decorations for your desk. Most of these workshops can also be done over video conference, or as a photo contest.

You can, for example, ask employees to take a photo of their tree or their desk decorated in Christmas colors, then post it to a group dedicated to your Christmas activities. Everyone can then vote for the best decoration by liking the photo they prefer.

These features are available on many intranets, and in particular on Talkspirit, a 100% French tool that lets you communicate and collaborate remotely with ease.

Discover Talkspirit

6. Run a cooking workshop

Maybe you've already taken part in cooking classes during the Covid-19 lockdown. So why not reinvent the concept for the holiday season?

The advantage of the cooking workshop is that just about anyone can take part. The only prerequisite is having a kitchen available. Depending on your employees' preferences, you can opt for a savory or sweet cooking workshop. On the sweet side, you can, for example, go for a Yule log, gingerbread, muffins, or homemade cakes.

The workshop can be led by someone internal or external. It goes without saying that if you have good cooks on your team, finding an internal resource shouldn't be too complicated 😉.

7. Prepare a Christmas murder mystery party

Are you familiar with the murder mystery party? It's a fictional police investigation aimed at solving a murder. Each participant is assigned a role they must play, while trying to figure out what happened.

The murder mystery party can be organized just about anywhere: in your premises, in a park, in the metaverse, or simply over video conference. It's therefore a great activity idea to strengthen hybrid team cohesion remotely.

You can also give it the theme of your choice. In the case of a Christmas-themed murder mystery party, you can, for example, invite participants to find out who killed Santa Claus 🔪.

One thing is certain: no one will be able to say the idea isn't original!

*
* *

And there you have it, you now have plenty of activity ideas to motivate and strengthen your hybrid teams' cohesion during the month of December. In addition to engaging your employees, these team-building activities can help improve your teams' well-being at work . And therefore – by correlation – boost their performance.

Looking for other best practices and examples of initiatives to develop your employees' well-being at work? Download our practical guide 👇

Access the Practical Guide

In our practical guide “10 examples of initiatives to improve well-being at work,” you'll discover: 10 examples of workplace well-being actions implemented by French and international companies, along with tips, best practices, and tools to put in place to ensure the success of your approach.

Download