Holiday Team Building Activities and Virtual Games

It’s the most wonderful time of the year – time to book your holiday get together! And if you’re thinking that a virtual holiday party is ideal for your group, the best way to ensure your guests will log off feeling jolly is to incorporate some fun elements, such as holiday team building games, gift giving games and more that will “sleigh” them! Here are some tips from the team building elves at Wildly Different to help you…

Why Organize Virtual Holiday Team Building Activities

People crave interaction during virtual events. While it’s fun to watch a chef whip up a holiday meal, or a comedian provide some laughs that would get Santa’s belly jiggling, the largest challenge when it comes to virtual events – as identified by a Virtual Events Survey – is “audience engagement,” followed by “interaction.” So, be sure to organize some virtual holiday team building activities that get people to talk face-to-face. You can:

Host your own DIY holiday icebreaker team building game:

Resist the temptation to just have people sit and chat virtually on Zoom or Microsoft Teams during your virtual holiday party. Instead, help people break the ice by building in a few short virtual ice breaker team building games, such as:

Sharing your screen to display holiday-themed puzzles, such as creating rebus puzzles that reveal a popular holiday song. Why is that baby wearing a red suit and a white beard? It’s “Santa Baby” of course! Why is the word Christmas written on the calendar so many times? It’s “The Twelve Days of Christmas” of course! You could also play holiday music and ask questions about it – what holiday cartoon is Burl Ives’ holiday song “A Holly Jolly Christmas” featured in? That would be “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Who can name the holiday song in only 5 chords? Award a gift to the person who answers the most right, or give each person who submits the answer on chat first an entry into a prize drawing!
Ask everyone to shut off their camera. Next, ask people to turn their camera on only if the category you read out applies to then, such as “Has baked holiday cookies,” “Owns more than one ugly holiday sweater,” or “Has a dog or cat”. Bonus points if they’re on the screen with them when their camera is turned back on!

Facilitate mingling with a virtual team building activity:

You know how awkward it can be entering an in-person holiday party and getting a conversation started? Well, it’s doubly awkward on virtual calls such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams. Get people chatting by setting up breakout rooms and naming them with the table topic they should discuss in that room, such as “My favorite holiday gift was…” or “My dream vacation for the holidays would be…”. Push people into those rooms – usually groups of 8 or less is best – let them talk for a bit, then close them out and send people to a new room for the next round of table topics.

Have some good old-fashioned fun by playing your favorite games as virtual team builders:

Set people up on teams and have them ring in if they guess the picture their teammate is drawing using the whiteboard on the virtual platform in a game of Pictionary. Create a Pub Trivia quiz on one of the many free platforms you can have players download for free to their devices, or just be on the honor system and have them write down their answers to questions you read out, awarding a prize to the one who got the most right.

Organize virtual games that facilitate for gift giving:

There are several free “wheel spinners” you can customize to put your players’ names on. Spin the wheel and whomever it comes to rest on can either pick a numbered envelope containing a gift you’ll send them after the party, or they can “steal” a previous player’s gift. Only allow a gift to be stolen up to three times and then it’s off limits! If the wheel lands on the same person more than once, the person whose name is to the right of that person’s name on the wheel gets to go next.

There are other sources that allow you to secretly draw names for a Secret Santa giveaway. Those who join in can even post a wish list. Have each person mail their gift to the person whose name they drew with a note on the box that says, “Do not open until our holiday party!” At the virtual holiday party, people reveal whose name they had and each person in turn opens their gift.

Sound like a lot of work? Check off one more holiday “to do” from your list and book a virtual holiday team building game with a team building company like ours!

But, don’t wait too much longer! Last year, Wildly Different “sold out” in the month of December and we got a lot of panicked calls from others desperately searching for a team building company that could help them. Last year we had only one holiday-themed team-building game, but this year, we’re happy to say that we have many more! Choose a “variety” game with an assortment of trivia, clues, photo and video tasks such as Oh What Fun, Jingle Mingle, or Around The World-Holiday-Themed. Or, if you’d like to put your wits to the test, a wintery virtual escape room like Escape The Arctic or a Murder On The Slopes mystery would be ideal.