Throwing a great office parties isn’t easy but it’s possible as long as you are willing to invest lots of time and energy into it and not to mention patience. I have seen over the years many office parties fail spectacularly and at the same time many that had wild success which just seemed to flow naturally. I’ve become interested in the subject so I got in touch with those who organized the best office parties I’ve ever gone to, to find out their secret. It turns out that there isn’t that much to it, but you need to have very developed social skills. Finding out what people would want, trying to pick out the trend setters and opinion makers in a group, knowing how people will react in certain situations is pretty hard to do and it helps a lot if you have the genes for it, but you can try to do it methodically and it might turn out to be quite fun. What you need to remember is that all these elements that I’ve mentioned will make or break your party. If you cannot read people, than find out who dose and get all the information you need. After that just follow some simple steps.

1.    Choose a theme. For me this is the most fun part of throwing a party. The best office parties may have extravagant themes, but if you are not sure how people may react to some of them, than just go for classics that most people like: a movie theme, a ’20 theme, a tropical theme. I personally would go with something a bit edgy like ugly sweater night, but it all depends on the crowd that will attend your party. If most of the people are open minded than put your imagination at work, if on the other hand, many of them are conservative, just stick with the classics.

2.    Send out the invitations with some time ahead. The worst thing you could do when organizing a party is to send the invitations to late. Remember, it is very hard to get a lot of people to attend an event, so making sure that they don’t make plans for that date is essential. Customize your invitation so that they are interesting and will make people not throw them away, as often happens.

3.    Make sure the fun people and the trend setters are coming. The key to the best office parties I’ve been are the people. Therefore you need to make your office party seem as hip as possible. If you want the cool, fun people to show up, you need to make things interesting or mysterious, get everybody talking about the event, and then the people you need to make a great party will show up.        

4.    Make a great playlist. No party is complete without great music. Make sure you make a playlist that contains a bit of something to please as many people as possible, but that everything is danceable, and energetic. Also don’t let people mingle in your playlist. Constantly changing the song will just create a bad mood, and people will start to get irritated.

5.    Don’t skimp on the catering. Make sure you try the food the catering company you are thinking of hiring beforehand. Great food is essential for throwing the best office parties, so you need not make any mistakes. Also make sure everything is easy to eat and not to fancy. You don’t want people just sitting around an eating all night.

6.    Lots of alcohol. And of course no great party is complete without industrial quantities of alcohol. So make sure you have enough, and make sure it will satisfy any taste. But quality is also important, because a bad hangover can ruin the impression the guests had on the party.

7.    Think up some fun games to do during the party. This is where you need to be very careful. You need to sense the mood of the crowd very well before you propose playing a game because otherwise it may go horribly wrong. Also never push a group of people to play something; it will just turn out bad.    

8.    Go wild with the decorations. Decorations are the only thing that will be different in an office space from any other normal day. So go wild with them, you don’t want people feeling that they’re still at work.

The best office parties are the ones which seem to have a natural flow. Nothing is abrupt; nothing happens out of the blue, everything just seems to come together. But in order to make everything feel like it’s flowing naturally, it will take a lot of work and dedication, so get ready. But if you keep to these simple steps, you should be OK.  

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I always say that a good work environment is a fun work environment. You need to be able to enjoy yourself at work, to loosen up, to have fun in order to be more efficient. If you succumb too much to stress and routine you will get nowhere and your work will suffer. So what you need to do is to come up with some fun ideas at work and make your boss implement them with the only argument he or she will listen too, the fact that this investment will prove be lucrative, because it will provide a better work environment, which will boost employee morale and motivation, which will finally improve efficiency and productivity, which will in turn bring a higher profit, and thus the circle is completed. If you know how to make this argument, even in tough economic times you might get away with a new foosball table in the common room or something similar. All you need to do is come up with the fun ideas. Of course you shouldn’t go overboard and you should try to stick to a budget that might not aggravate your bosses too much. Good luck, and to spur you on, here are a couple of ideas which I found to be very fun at the workplace:

1.    Foosball. One of the great fun ideas at work is to have a foosball table in the common room. It might sound like more of a guy thing, but actually it’s fun for everybody. It’s not that expensive to buy, so maybe your boss won’t have such a hard time getting his head around it. The only down side is that you can only play maximum four at a time, but if you were to have two foosball tables, than organizing a championship and getting everybody competitive and excited wouldn’t be so hard.

2.    Thematic office parties. Everybody loves to dress up, and best of all it doesn’t cost the company anything, because all they have to do is provide the venue. It’s one of the great fun ideas at work, because everybody would like to dress up and pretend like they are somebody else for example, in the case of a costume party. Your job as an organizer is to come up with a great and original theme that everybody will love.

3.    Have pets at work. You can talk your boss into letting you have an office pet, such as a parakeet or a rabbit or a guinea pig. Everybody loves a small creature, so it wouldn’t be that hard into talking your boss into it, which makes it a one of the great fun ideas at work. Sharing the responsibility and always being able to look at an innocent cute creature will do wonders for employee morale and cohesion, which will give you yet another argument for convincing your boss.

4.    Casual Friday. This is a fun idea at work that has become almost common place for al corporations. Still, it is not always present in small businesses and I think every employee should try to make a plea to their bosses in order to get it, because it has been proven as a great method to reduce employee stress.

5.    Impersonate a colleague day. You should try to make this rule once a month that everybody has to pick a name out of a bag and then impersonate that person for the rest of the day. It’s a great way to loosen up, to reduce stress, and to stop people taking themselves too seriously. I believe this is an idea with a lot of potential, especially in a young or open minded environment, where everybody can take a joke.

6.    Balloon day. Who doesn’t like balloons? So why not make a day specially dedicated for them. Get balloons everywhere in the workplace because everybody associates them with a good time. So, even if there is no special occasion, fill the office with balloons and everyone will have a good time.

7.    Employees bake off. Eating healthy is the key to having a good state of mind. So, a good place to start is to eliminate junk food from the work place. Getting your bosses to give money for a fully equipped kitchen where every employee can cook their own meals won’t be an easy task, but I believe it will be worth it.

These are just some fun ideas at work that I have seen put in practice, with a pretty big success, but of course the key is to find something that suits the mechanics of your team. If you think you have any suggestions or some great ideas, please feel free to leave them in the comments section bellow. Now remember, the only way you can be efficient at your work, is to enjoy it and have fun once in a while.  

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