Creative Meeting Add Ons: Incorporate Holiday Themes

Many companies try to avoid planning meetings or events during or near a major holiday, but sometimes it is unavoidable. Other times, you might want to capitalize on the upcoming holiday to add interesting elements to your meetings, especially staff meetings. In this article we'll explore some general rules of thumb and then some specific theme ideas for major holidays.

In general, consider the following rules of thumb for any meeting that ties-in with a holiday:

• Plan well in advance. If you will need outside vendors, such as caterers, florists, etc., you will want to plan well in advance. Otherwise these vendors might already be booked or they might have instituted higher holiday prices.
• Steer away from religious connotations. Although many holidays tie-in with specific religious beliefs, you should steer away from making any office meeting or event religious. Otherwise you are likely to alienate some of the participants who may not share the same views.
• Minimize travel during major holidays. Travel is so much more difficult and expensive around the time of a holiday and you should be sensitive to this fact. If you need to gather people in person, do so at least a week before the holiday or wait at least a week after the holiday. Also, give people a lot of notice so they can benefit from advance booking discounts. If possible, consider a virtual meeting using web conferencing services. 
• If you are going to serve alcohol in connection with your meeting or event then also plan back-up transportation for people who drink too much. Monitor your participants and insist they use your back-up transportation (at no cost to them). 
• During your company's annual budgeting time, put aside some money (a modest amount) that can be used for creative menus, door prizes and incentives in the coming year so you can have the flexibility to tie-in with holidays.

Many holidays lend themselves to creative add-ons for your meeting in the menu, agenda, door prizes, etc. The following chart describes one creative menu idea and one creative tie-in for major holiday-related meetings. Taking a cue from the popular TV show "The Office," you might want to appoint a committee of creative employees whose charge is to think through the meeting and event schedule for the year, and identify creative tie-ins with upcoming holidays. This way, people will look forward to attending since they know something interesting or fun will be in store (although hopefully your staff will do a better job than the Dunder Mifflin employees on The Office!)

 

 

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