How to have a great Christmas party on Teams!

This year, it looks like we will be partying at home again. With the new wave of Covid cases, many work Christmas parties are being canned, but fear not, you can still celebrate virtually.

Teams is an accessible way to get together and offer a variety of ingenious ways to have fun and think outside the box.

So it doesn’t have to be awkward chit chat, why not add in some games, get inventive and get everyone laughing together. Below are some of our suggestions on how to have a great Christmas party on Teams.

Fun things to do at your virtual Christmas party

1. Musical Chairs

Did you know you can turn any Excel spreadsheet into a musical chairs arena?

With no limit to who can take part, each user moves around the purple rectangle till your favourite favourite Christmas song stops, then the real battle begins!

Each player must use the arrow keys on their keyboard to land on the orange square, thus securing their slot for the next round.

2. Play charades

Charades is a simple visual game in which players decide on a film, tv show, book or song (or combination) and act it out silently for others to guess the correct answer.

As it is an acting challenge, the person doing the charades can be watched on camera and others can make a guess via the ‘raise your hand’ option in the top bar.

The rules are the same as normal, no speaking allowed from the person acting, break down into syllables, words, ‘sounds like’ or entire thing. If someone is close or gets a word correct, tap your nose so that they know they are on the right track. Once someone has guessed the correct answer, it passes to them to do the next charades, and so on.

3. A-Z of Christmas words

In teams, players will be tasked with word association, from A to Z, coming up with a Christmas themed list of words for every letter of the alphabet and fill in the list via the Forms software.

Once each Team has their list, a word cloud can be created to determine the most common words that arise, plus any of the more obscure or silly ideas.

4. Pass the parcel

While we cannot play traditional pass the parcel, why not get creative and play a PowerPoint based version to spread positivity at the end of another surreal year.

One person will start with their slide, adding in something positive that happened to them this year (it can be as random as you like), and once they have done that, they can send the link across to another team member to add theirs.

Eventually, everyone will have added their positive, but those with the link can also jump back in at any time as the software allows up to 99 people in the doc at a time, and ‘unwrap’ others’ slides.

It’s simple, but a great way to spread joy ahead of the holidays.

5. Together mode Guess Who?

If you launch ‘Together Mode’, all attendees are put into a lecture-hall style seating set up and using this you can play a real-life ‘Guess Who?’

All you have to do is activate Together Mode, choose a team member as the ‘secret person’ (don’t tell anyone), then have players take turns in asking “yes” or “no” questions.

For instance, “does this person wear glasses?” or “does this person run marathons?” – it’s a good test of how well you know your colleagues! And if you don’t, you certainly will learn more about them after this game.

Anyone who is eliminated by the question should turn off their camera until there is one person left on screen, or a player correctly guesses the right person.

We’re Microsoft Teams experts and can answer all your questions as well as help your organisation to embed Teams in days, not months. Whether it be a Christmas party on Teams or Teams best practices, we have you covered. Contact us via the form below or at [email protected]