After over a year of being in a pandemic, we tried to figure out a way to have a fun office Christmas party to boost the morale of the employees. We had gotten a hugely discounted quote from Novotel and had turned it down, but after hearing that other offices were also starting to have big gatherings, we put together a plan to use that as the precedent for asking HR if we could also have one. I sat down, made a budget, presented it to HR and the big bosses, and got the idea approved.
Now I’m no stranger to party planning as someone who often does it for gatherings for friends, but it was an entirely bigger beast to do it for an office party of close to a hundred people. And I wasn’t only in charge of the budget, I also handled the program, thinking of and purchasing 50 raffle draw prizes, sending out communications and gathering info on attendance, and was also the emcee, because they asked me to be. What added to the complication was the 70% vaccinated rule by the government. For some reason, a lot of Hongkongers are not vaccinated, our office included, and we were not sure if we would make the ratio or have to turn people away at the venue. Spoiler: we made it.
On the day of the event (Dec 17th after office hours), I put on a green wool sweater paired with a red and green plaid skirt and got a lot of compliments on my holiday outfit. I had a holiday themed mask on, too. My colleague Rob, who was my co-emcee, bought some Christmas themed headbands and we put them on with colleagues and had pictures. I lent him my red and green plaid scarf so we could match.
Novotel had offered their brand new room at the basement for event and decorated it beautifully. I was amazed that they had party favors on the table like party hats and noise makers. They also had a very sumptuous buffet banquet. The food was delicious.
Our program consisted of a few games, a couple of speeches for our head who had turned 15 years in the company, and raffling off of prizes which had an iPhone 13 as the biggest one.
Overall, people were very happy at getting a chance to be in an actual real party again after so long, so all my effort did feel worth it.
Then I got invited to an after party where we went to this club where you could play beer pong and a new VP ordered champagne which were served with sparklers. It was the perfect way to cap the night.
Leave a Reply