Company Holiday Party Ideas on a Budget

Your office is the perfect place to celebrate!

Planning great company holiday party ideas on a budget is challenging. Having the celebration in the office is a great way to save money. Here are five steps that can help make your party in the office memorable and fun!

1. Add Background Music

Coworkers in a room, staring across a table at each other: is that a party or just another meeting? Set a festive tone by providing a soundtrack appropriate to the mood you’re trying to create. Whether you’re going for polite cocktail party chatter or full-tilt boogying, you can create a free Spotify playlist or Pandora channel or try streaming internet radio. When your employees hear music wafting from your party location, it helps build positive anticipation as they head down the hall to join the celebration—in other words, you’re literally putting them in the party mindset.

2. Hold a Costume Contest

This can be as involved or simple as is appropriate for office culture. If things around your workplace are pretty buttoned up, keep it mild instead of wild: purchase Santa or baseball hats, have people decorate them, and then conduct a fashion show or gallery walk and give out prizes for the most creative entries. If your office culture is highly engaged and tolerates full-body sequins, go for something more elaborate, like “Reindeer on the Riviera” or “Snowpeople on a Cruise Ship.”

Promote your costume contest—and the theme—a month before the party to give people enough time to devise something or team up with colleagues. For middle ground, a good old-fashioned ugly-holiday-sweater contest is a cheap, easy way to have a lot of fun! Make sure you also create space for a contestant runway, as well as a separate judges’ room to ensure private discussion when picking the winners.

3. Decorate Creatively

Sure, you could trot out the same decorations your company has used for the past eight holiday parties, but why not shake it up this year? One idea is to ask coworkers who have kids to bring in holiday artwork made by their children and put it up around the office. Most of the time parents have an abundance of this stuff and are running out of room on the fridge. Besides being adorable, this will spark conversation about family and help people get to know each other. And if you want to give that perennial display of Santa and all his reindeer a break this year, we can pick it up and take it to offsite storage for you, freeing up space for indoor bocce, a carving station, or team Jenga games.

4. Serve Up Delicious Food

We’ve all seen it happen: potluck office parties which yield store-bought cookies and juice, and more paper plates and cups than you could use in 100 holiday parties. Instead of employees buying their own contributions, you can have everyone contribute to a community pot that can go towards supporting a local bakery or restaurant! Tacos and pasteles from a Mexican restaurant, or fried chicken and sweet potato pie from a soul food place are some tasty inexpensive options that won’t hang around the office kitchen getting stale for the next six months. Be sure to provide plenty of space and table options if people want to sit or stand while they eat. Not only does that allow employees to converse easily, it also helps avoid the classic awkward holiday party pitfall of juggling appetizers and a drink when trying to shake someone’s hand.

5. Enjoy the Party

As your company’s party planner, it’s easy to stay in that role of “host” or event producer. It’s not a party if you are too busy to enjoy hanging out. Don’t worry about pushing all the tables aside in the conference room, and then back in place when the party is done. From setup to breakdown, it’s important to hire professionals who can help you throw a legendary party. So you can spoon a little more cheese on your make-your-own baked potato—and relax. It’s the holidays.

Holiday Moves?

Having a holiday celebration at the office not only brings cheer into the workplace, but is bottom-line friendly, too. Corovan provides ongoing facility support for your business needs and budget. We can move your office furniture into the perfect layout for holiday celebrations or other functions. We can make space for a dance floor without having to re-route the entire IT system, or move that heavy filing cabinet that’s blocking the door to the closet where the decorations are stored! We can make sure everything is in place, and just as important, we can make sure it all gets put back as it was when you’re done celebrating. We here at Corovan wish you and yours a fun holiday season.