Our Favourite Ideas for an Irresistible Corporate Christmas Event

Every September, staff work hard to avoid drawing the short straw. Being picked to plan and organise a corporate Christmas event is tough.

You worry that not everyone will enjoy your party. So you spend hours trying to come up with cool and quirky corporate Christmas event ideas. You want it to be memorable and for everyone to have a good time. But you also want to do something that will bring the team together.

September and October are the busiest months we get for Christmas party bookings, so we wanted to help you get a head start on your planning.

We’ve done all the hard work for you and hope you get inspired by our list of the best corporate Christmas event ideas we could find. We’ve split it into different categories, from small party games to all-day events.

An Evening Get-Together Christmas Party

This is considered a classic for many smaller businesses, as it is simple and easy to arrange. The usual party involves meeting at a bar for a meal and some drinks. But that’s too boring for this blog. Here are some ways you can spice up this type of Christmas party.

Make Bowling Competitive and Interesting

This is possibly the safest option on the entire list. That’s probably why it’s a common Christmas party idea for businesses. However, the fun-factor is boosted if you include some extra side-games with the bowling.

Most bowling alleys today will offer alcoholic drinks and cocktails. When you have this available, the competitive element of bowling can be a little more fun. Let’s face facts here and admit right off-the-bat that almost all Christmas parties involve alcohol.

The alcohol can be as little as a few glasses of wine with your meal, or considerably more. We’re not here to judge you, we’re just giving you some fun corporate Christmas event ideas.

The best example we found was related to shots: If one of your team scores a strike, everybody from the other team has to take a shot. If one of your team scores a spare, they can choose someone from the other team to take a shot.

This makes for some very wild bowling! Everybody feels pressure to score a strike in order to make the other team take a shot.

Your scores will be considerably lower, especially when the shots start to take effect. Because of this, a lot of the bowls end up in the gutter.

One of the top bowling alleys we’ve spotted is All-Star Lanes. They have sites in London and Manchester. If you fancy going there, we strongly recommend you book one of their private rooms for your Christmas party. You can get multiple lanes, unlimited bowling and a fully stocked, expertly staffed cocktail bar. It’s a real opportunity to let your hair down.

Keep it Cheap and Casual With Beer Pong

From one of the safest to one of the simplest. Holding a staff Christmas party in the office isn’t an uncommon event. You could easily set up a few games of beer pong in the office.

All you need to set this up is a table, a ping pong ball, some cups and a lot of beer. The idea is to throw the ball into one of the opposing team’s cups, located at the other end of the table.

If you are successful, one of the opposing team members has to drink that cup of beer. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? It’s actually much harder than it sounds, and the last few cups always gets very tense.

If you’re looking to organise a team-building activity on a tight budget, beer pong is surprisingly effective. Whilst your fellow team members can give some advice on your bowling technique, we’ve noticed that advice has a far greater effect when playing beer pong.

We think this is likely because there is actually arguably a little less skill involved. After all, the tables are generally shorter than a bowling lane. Furthermore, you’re aiming to get the ball into a single cup, rather than knock down 10 pins.

Whilst you can set this up in your own offices with ease, we understand that you may not want to host your party in the same place as where you work. If that’s the case, the North Laine Brewhouse in Brighton caters for beer pong. They also offer a great selection of their own brewed drinks. Plus, the food is delicious!

Absorb Some Culture by Hiring a Cinema Room

You can really wow your colleagues by hiring a cinema to show the team a film of their choice. Of course, the film choice can be difficult. We recommend simply casting a vote between a few different films amongst team members.

The most popular film gets shown, although our recommendation is the old Jim Carrey film, The Mask.

Tuck into some fab food and sink a few beers or cocktails whilst you laugh at and discuss the film. It’s a safe choice, but a corporate Christmas event idea that seems to rarely be done.

Alternatively, if your staff are all really into quirky ideas and cult films, you could always watch The Room. Just remember to bring lots of plastic cutlery and a few American footballs with you for the viewing!

Our top picks for where you can hire a cinema are Picturehouse. They have 26 locations across the UK, including the famous Duke of York’s Picturehouse in Brighton. The alternative is Electric Cinema in London, which features beds for the front row and Kashmir blankets for all. They’re very cosy!

Break Down Barriers at a Karaoke Bar

After munching a carb-loaded meal and chatting over some cocktails, everybody will be ready to sing their hearts out in a tone-deaf effort. It’s a great laugh and brings co-workers closer together.

Yes, you are guaranteed to embarrass yourself. But you can drown that out by taking advantage of the cocktail bar.

The thing is, all of your colleagues will be embarrassing themselves as well. It happens as soon as they touch the microphone, so you won’t be alone. It really helps to tear down walls between each member of the team. They will start to find common ground in their inability to sing.

If you’re based in the south of England, your job can be made a lot easier with Lucky Voice. They specialise in Christmas karaoke room bookings and offer over 10,000 songs to go with the cocktail bar.

This kind of booking takes a lot of pressure off for the organiser. As a result, they can also relax a little more on the event date. At the end of it all, you want everybody to enjoy the party. But make sure you do, as well.

Just book it and you’re sorted!

A Simple DIY Christmas Event

Sometimes, you just want to do it yourself. This can be because you don’t have any exciting facilities close by, or you may not have the budget. You may also feel that you could arrange something better on your own.

Whatever the reason may be, you can plan and organise a memorable Christmas event yourself. To help, we’ve found some very unique suggestions for you.

Make a Weekend of it With AirBnB

This would be a very welcome reward for your team. They will appreciate you recognising their hard work over the past year by taking them out of the office.

A lot of country getaway places on AirBnB will provide a range of entertainment for your staff. This means everybody will have something to enjoy. Activities and facilities can include a home cinema, swimming pool, hot tub, board games and gaming consoles.

For us, we consider this one of the best corporate Christmas event ideas in this blog, because it solves the biggest worry all organisers have: Making sure everybody will enjoy it.

If you have a range of activities available, you’re vastly improving your chances of achieving enjoyment for all.

If you’re not sure of activity ideas when you’re at the AirBnB, be sure to look at the Christmas activity ideas for your office section, below. A lot of the ideas there can be used at your AirBnB site.

Create Your Own Cinema by Hiring a Screen

If one of your colleagues has a large garden to use, you could create a cinema experience by hiring a mobile screen and renting a film.

There’s something quite cosy about sitting on a blanket with a glass of prosecco in your hand and a packet of popcorn in front of you.

Similar to the entry above that involved hiring a cinema, take votes on what film should be shown. If you’re planning for a long night, you can always show more than one film.

We recommend you try Mobile Screen Hire, as they offer LED screens and provide all the equipment you need for a single-day hire.

Christmas Activity Ideas for Your Office

Get Competitive With Office Olympics

If you can’t wait for the next Olympics to come around, just host your own events for your Christmas party. The golden rule here is that food always makes events more fun.

Start off with an easy event, which actually isn’t that easy: Everybody needs to balance a bag of crisps on a spoon and get to the end of a corridor as quickly as possible. If you drop your bag, you’re out.

The first one to finish this egg-and-spoon-derived event wins gold. If everybody drops their bag, the person who got the furthest wins.

You could even try it as a relay event. Participants have to pass the bag from their spoon onto the spoon of a teammate during the race. That makes it much harder!

Later, you can try the Mega Sours Challenge: You have a bag filled with bon-bons and one mega sour sweet per participant. Each person takes a sweet from the bag and eats it.

There’s no way you can hide it when you’ve put a mega sour in your mouth. When you do, you are out. The last person standing wins the gold medal.

However, our favourite event has to be Office Chair Drag Racing: Line up two-or-more people next to each other on a starting line.

Staff have to use their feet to push themselves backwards down the corridor to get to the end first.

This always leads to highlight-reel crashes and friendly competition. Just make sure there’s enough room. If you’re worried, just make it a solo time-trial event and the best time wins, but it’s not as fun.

Remember to film your events and select a team member to be the host. It would make for some great content on YouTube and social media!

Tap into Nostalgia and Organise a Favourite Decade Theme

As a fairly relaxed day, this helps to make your corporate party less boring right from the start. Combining fun activities with irresistible nostalgia almost always goes down well with staff.

To start, just pick a decade. Consider the age of most of your colleagues and pick their favourite decade. Don’t just go for the usual 80s decade. For our example below, we’re going to look at the 1990’s.

It’s pretty easy to sum up the 90s in a few words: Flannel shirts, cargo trousers, sports jackets, Friends; the TV show, Walkmans and Grunge music.

Everybody comes in dressed up like the 1990’s. You play Pearl Jam and Nirvana in the office all day and discuss your favourite episodes of Friends. Once you’re ready, you can break out the amazing board games that the 90s brought us.

Our personal favourite is Crocodile Dentist, as it’s really tense. Players simply have to extract teeth from a crocodile mouth whilst avoiding the sore tooth. The mouth shuts and the crocodile lunges towards you if you pull the sore tooth. It’s actually quite the shock!

Discussing board games brings us onto the next idea on this list.

Host a Boardgame Marathon

This is an especially great idea if your office is filled with millennials. Odds are, they will probably love boardgames and can contribute a few to the event.

If you’re in a large business that employs more people than a single game can accommodate, you can still do this.

Simply divide up your staff into teams of four-or-less, then assign them to a specific game. After an hour-or-so, rotate the games so it won’t get boring.

Set Up a DIY Photobooth

Having a photobooth at any party is an almost guaranteed hit, especially when younger people are attending. However, those booths can be expensive to hire.

You can create your own photobooth to get around the cost in a few simple steps. Start by creating your backdrop, which can be something as simple as butcher paper. Tape that to your wall or hang it from something high up.

Alternatively, you can always splash out a little and hire a customised backdrop. Something like a city scene, if you have a specific theme.

Secondly, you need to get some props from your local party and pound shops. These can include funny hats, fake moustaches and masks. Get creative!

Lastly, you need to start taking photos! We recommend designating a photographer for the night. Choose anybody who’s a bit camera-shy but still wants to be involved. Have them download a polaroid app onto their phone, then start snapping away.

Work Together by Breaking Out of an Escape Room

An intense, but fun experience involving teamwork, solving puzzles and keeping your cool.

The idea is that you are all trapped together in a room with up-to an hour to get out. The only tool at your disposal is your mind: You have to solve cryptic puzzles and find clues in order to work out how you can escape.

These fun activities force your staff to work together, unless they enjoy confined spaces and don’t want to see daylight again.

As a result of the intensity of these escape rooms, you aren’t left any room to chat with and get to know your colleagues. It’s all about the puzzles and clues, which makes it more of a team-building activity than a chance for everybody to relax.

It really depends upon the people in your team, as some may really enjoy this type of activity.

If this absolutely is for your team, we found a great article from Timeout that lists London’s best escape rooms. Some of these are said to be incredibly hard, but you will ultimately feel satisfied when you beat the challenge.

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Final Thoughts

A Christmas party is a necessary time for letting your hair down, but it should never be seen as a wasted business expense that you want to keep to a minimum. Instead, it’s a way to encourage teamwork and can bring the team closer together.

The results of this can be hugely positive for your business, so use it as a way to invest in your team. Morale is improved, tensions are relieved, and your team improve the way they work together.

They’ll thank you for it, afterwards.

If you fancy giving Southdown Gun Club a go for your corporate Christmas event, be sure to get in contact and book now, before your party date is taken.