As we move into the festive season, trying to figure out what to do about gifting for people in your own office can be difficult. Whether you’re the boss or whether you are looking at your coworkers, you might come up with the idea of a Secret Santa for the workplace.
Christmas is a fun time of year, and if the office party is in sight, you might think about arranging a Secret Santa to go off during the office party. But do you know how to play? Do you know what rules to put in place so that Christmas gift ideas for all are easy to find? If it’s been a stressful year, you need to be able to jolly up the office mood. And even if everyone in your office works remotely and only gets together for the Christmas party, you need to think about how to make your office Secret Santa a success. Let’s take a look at some of the tips that you need to make it so.
Know the rules. If you want it to be a successful game, then you need to know the rules of playing in the first place. Office secret Santa is a game in which members of a specific team or the department give gifts to each other. The identity of the gift giver is not to be revealed to the recipient. The easiest way to do this is to get everybody who is taking part to put their names into a hat, and everybody draws a name.
- Make a list of everybody who wants to take part. Once you have a confirmed list of people happy to take part with a confirmed budget, then you need to get everybody’s names into a hat. You can do it by pen and paper, or you can use a digital Secret Santa tool. It’s completely up to you.You need to have a price target here because not everybody in your office is going to be on the same salary level. So whether you have a $20 gifting limit is completely up to you. Some people like to do a $10.00 gift limit and the whole idea is to have a fun gift practice so that everybody gets something silly.
- Everybody draws a name. In an unfortunate case where somebody picks their own name, they have to put it immediately back and go again. Make sure everybody keeps it to themselves who they have drawn, otherwise the fun isn’t in it. The best thing about Secret Santa is that everybody gets a gift in the end.But nobody wants to know who the gifter is until the last minute.
- Make it clear that everybody has to tag their gift and that there is a deadline for delivering that gift to the office. Names should be on every gift so that you know that everybody has received one by the deadline. If somebody needs to pull out at the last minute, that can ruin the whole game. You should be planning when the gifts will be exchanged and preferably that should be done during the office Christmas party or the day of the office Christmas party so that people can take their gifts home.
Photo by Pavel Danilyuk
