Last year my Virtual Organization held its first Remote Holiday Party
Here is what made it a success
I work for a 100% remote organization with no physical headquarters. We have about 20 employees spread out across all time zones in the US. We use Zoom as our primary communication tool and we were able to use a couple of the tools that are built into Zoom to make the party fun. Here is how we did it.
Planning
We all hate committees, but sometimes they are a necessary part of getting sh#$t done. Our COO asked for volunteers at our November staff meeting and 3 staff members volunteered to meet and help plan the party. Along with the COO we met two times prior to the party to plan it. Also, one of our committee members was responsible for planning and leading each of the three games we played.
Holiday Hats
We randomly assigned people “Secret Santas” who would buy someone else a funny holiday hat online and have it mailed to that person. Each person wore their hat during the party. This is a nice way to set a fun and festive mood for the party. These hats can easily be found online for around 10 or 15 dollars.
Games
We planned three games during the party and we were able to take advantage of a couple of the built-in features of zoom to make them fun.
The first game was Two Truths and a Lie. You probably played this as a kid in middle school. It's where one person tells the group two things that are true about them, and one that is false. Zoom has a poll feature, so we took advantage of that tool to play this game. We asked staff members to email two truths and a lie to me. I then created a poll for each person. During the party, we launched the poll for each person and asked the rest of the staff to guess which is the lie. This was a fun way to get to know interesting things about your coworkers you might not otherwise find out. If you are clever you can really have fun with these. The goal is to make it really tough to tell which is the lie. After everyone votes which they think is the lie, we then display the results and ask the person to then reveal which is the lie. This usually leads to fun conversation and questions about the two truths.
Next was Pictionary. Here we used the Whiteboard feature within Zoom as the Picture Board. Rather than doing teams we just randomly choose one person to draw each turn. One of our committee members was in charge of leading this game, and she primarily shared with the drawer what they should be drawing.
Finally, we played Virtual Bingo. One of our committee members created a bingo board on http://print-bingo.com/ where the blocks represented phrases and topics related to a current project our organization is working on. This was not only fun, but it also was a way to reinforce our current focus within the organization.
