What makes a spectacularly successful work Christmas party? Here’s what really goes into a great party for colleagues (and it doesn’t rely on alcohol)…
The purpose of a great corporate Christmas party ought to be wonderfully simple: give everyone a great time. It should celebrate the people who have worked together all year, and in doing so bring them even closer. It should create time and space for the usual hierarchies and workplace politics to recede, so that they see one another as people rather than job titles. And ideally, the positive effects should last well into the new year.
Traditionally, alcohol has been the office party’s most convenient shortcut from work mode to party mode. A glass of champagne on arrival feels generous – and of course it lowers inhibitions and breaks the ice.
But times are changing. Plenty of people still enjoy a drink, naturally, but plenty don’t. Drinking culture is changing, particularly among younger employees; workforces are increasingly culturally diverse; and employers are understandably more conscious of what can happen when an event relies too heavily on alcohol to create its atmosphere.
But there is a way – a much better way – to create everything the alcohol was supposed to create in the first place, and much more besides. A Christmas party based around play reaches the parts that no drink can.
Here’s how.
Telling a roomful of colleagues to relax and enjoy themselves is remarkably ineffective – even at a party, our ordinary social calculations and anxieties tend to follow us around.
Who do I know? Who should I speak to? Is that my boss over there? Can I escape this conversation without looking rude? Should I join that group? Have I been standing next to the bar for too long?
Good play makes most of those questions irrelevant.
Give people a mystery, a mission, a puzzle or a ridiculous shared problem and attention moves away from the self. You are no longer trying to think of something interesting to say to the person from Finance, but trying to work out whether they are a Traitor or a Faithful.
Conversation emerges naturally, and enjoyably, when two people are looking together at something else, rather than directly at one another trying to make a connection happen. Sociability becomes a by-product of doing something absorbing and fun.
A Christmas party is supposed to mark a boundary. The working year is nearly done; for an evening at least, the targets, deadlines, meetings and inboxes can disappear.
Changing the location helps, but it does not necessarily change the relationships. Put the same people in a hotel ballroom and the office hierarchy can quite easily come with them.
Play creates a more convincing break because it establishes a temporary world with different rules and priorities. At Sharky + George, that might mean becoming embroiled in a Murder Mystery, competing in a personalised Gameshow, or passing through Seven Secret Doors into a succession of unexpected characters, rooms and challenges.
That sense of stepping outside ordinary life is an important part of celebration. The best parties create a world people can become absorbed in, rather than simply supplying a room in which they are expected to entertain themselves.
Not everybody enjoys themselves in the same way. Some love performing, some are fiercely competitive, some want to solve things, some naturally organise everyone else and some prefer to watch for a while before finding their moment.
Good play creates room for all of them – particularly when it is led by brilliant hosts who can read a room, draw people in and adapt the experience as it unfolds. That makes it much more inclusive than a party whose atmosphere depends mainly on people becoming more outgoing as the evening progresses. Those who want champagne, cocktails or wine can enjoy them, while those who don’t drink are already part of the same experience on exactly the same terms.
The same principle applies culturally. Not everyone in an international organisation celebrates Christmas, and an end-of-year party does not have to depend on elves and mistletoe to feel spectacular. An immersive experience such as Seven Secret Doors or 007 can create all the excitement and sense of occasion of a festive celebration while belonging equally to everyone in the room.
Inclusivity needn’t mean taking things away from the party. It can mean designing more ways for people to enjoy it.
Workplaces inevitably give people roles. Play temporarily scrambles them.
The colleague who rarely speaks spots the clue everyone else missed; someone junior instinctively takes charge; a supposedly serious person turns out to have impeccable comic timing.
These moments are funny, but they also reveal valuable qualities. Ingenuity, generosity, imagination, leadership and the ability to bring others into the game emerge naturally.
For a few hours, people get a fuller picture of the humans behind the organisational chart. And once colleagues have seen different sides of one another, those relationships often feel different when everyone is back at work.
The real test of a great company party may come several days after it has finished. What are people still talking about?
Ideally, it’s something positive and fun: the impossible clue somebody unexpected solved, or the moment a group of sensible adults became wildly invested in winning a completely meaningless challenge.
These stories become part of the unofficial life of an organisation: shared memories and jokes that resurface in kitchens, corridors and meetings long after the event itself has disappeared from the calendar.
This is where the effects of a Christmas party can last beyond the evening.
At Sharky+George, we talk about Belonging and Vitality as two of the serious benefits of play: the connection that comes from sharing an experience, and the energy that comes from becoming completely caught up in it.
Nobody needs to think about those things on the night. They just need to have a brilliant time.
But if the party has been designed well, they may come back in January knowing their colleagues a little better, feeling a little closer to them and carrying a few stories they now share.
A brilliant Christmas party should bring people together, let them leave ordinary work behind and give everyone a genuinely great time. Alcohol can certainly be part of that – it just doesn’t have to be responsible for making it happen.
View Sharky+George’s Christmas 2026 bochure.
You can read more about the thinking behind our approach in our free white paper, The Transformational Power of Play.
