For many organizations, the holidays are one of the most stressful and busy times of the year. Your leadership team wants all outstanding business operations and objectives in place before the new year, while employees are gearing up for days off and vacation time.

While everyone struggles to complete their tasks and last-minute changes, recognition, engagement, and appreciation can quickly fall to the wayside. And yet, this time of the year presents a unique opportunity to nurture your employee relationships and focus on morale, so that all team members feel excited to come back to work in January.

If you’d like to keep your teams engaged during the holidays but are tired of traditional office parties or Secret Santa games, try a few of our following tips to mix things up:

Take Your Office Party Outdoors

The holiday office party is typically held indoors towards the end of a workday, and most employees feel obligated to stay for the party or engage because they “have to.” For some companies, the traditional office party is held at a restaurant or local venue to get employees out of the office, but why not take the party outdoors?

Consider taking a trip to the mountains with your team to ski, hike, and enjoy hot chocolate and marshmallows by the campfire.

Depending on the weather, you could also host a barbecue at a nearby park. Everyone could bring a dish, and you could treat them to a local brewery tour.

Tip: If you’re not sure what everyone in your company would like to do, survey your teams to ask them where they’d like to have the holiday party take place.

Host a Holiday Scavenger Hunt in Your City

Instead of the traditional Secret Santa games, give your teams a break from their desks and let them explore the city by hosting a city-wide scavenger hunt.

Divide your employees up into teams and provide them with a list of clues or riddles they must solve that will lead them to different corners of your city to find secret prizes.

Encourage your teams to carpool or use public transit, and give everyone the day to complete the scavenger hunt. This type of activity is a great team-building exercise, especially if you create teams of employees from different departments.

Tip: Make the prizes company-focused, such as team lunches, a beer or coffee with the boss, office dog days, extra days off, a new piece of work technology, and soon.

Have a Secret Holiday Food Taste Testing

If you’d like to give your teams a good laugh and get everyone on board with a quirky activity, consider a secret holiday food taste testing.

Have a few employees volunteer to be taste testers, where they’ll try dishes other employees have made that reflect traditional holiday foods from around the world. But, switch it up by blindfolding the taste testers.

When the taste testers guess a dish or flavour correctly, they collect points that can be ‘redeemed’ for an office-wide prize of their choice. For example, you could give the winning taste tester the option of letting everyone leave a few hours early on a Friday of their choosing, or hire a barista to come to the office for a day.

Tip: Ensure you’re aware of any allergies in your office before having employees participate in any food-related holiday activity.