Virtual White Elephant - The Perfect 2024 Office Holiday Party Activity for Remote Teams
Now that Halloween is behind us, it’s official: The holiday season is here!
If you’re a department manager, HR exec, or just the office go-to person for making the company culture awesome, then the end-of-year holiday party is a great opportunity to bring your employees together.
Set a date, schedule a Zoom and get ready to host your first ever Virtual White Elephant. The classic gift-swap game, played by millions during the holiday & Christmas season, is a great way to connect, share some laughs, and make memories for you and your team.
What is White Elephant?
If you’re not familiar with the White Elephant gift exchange (also called Yankee Swap or Dirty Santa), it’s a gift-swapping game where everyone comes with one gift, numbers are drawn, and each participant takes their turn either unwrapping a new gift, or stealing a gift from someone who’s already opened one. The gift theme is often impractical or funny items, which makes the game all the more fun. Check out our full rundown on White Elephant Rules for more details.
5 Reasons White Elephant is great for an office holiday party
If you’ve ever played it, you know it’s a great time. But there are a bunch of additional reasons it works particularly well in an office environment. To name a few:
White Elephant lets everyone show their personality. Are you practical or silly? Will you bring a cookbook or a mini desk-vacuum? Are you the type of person that wants a Christmas candle, or an ‘I’m with stupid’ t-shirt? By everyone contributing their own gift - and showing their true colors when choosing what to open or steal! - the game offers a very low-stakes way for people to be themselves and let the group get to know each other.
Everyone gets a gift! At the end of the day, everyone has a memento of the event. It’s a nice reminder, and can be a great conversation piece even months later (especially if it’s sitting on your desk)
It’s an Interactive and structured activity. If you’ve tried remote activities like a Zoom Happy Hour, you know it can be tough to get much engagement without something to do. (How many people can really talk to each-other at once anyway?) Playing a game allows everyone to get in on the action, and White Elephant keeps even observers involved wondering what’s newly opened, and who might be coming after their gift next!
It takes some time! No you don’t want to play forever, but you want an activity that’s an experience. Depending on the number of people and the pace of play, a White Elephant game can take anywhere from 15 min to an hour. This is a great way to spend some quality time with the team, or supplement other activities you have lined up. With White Elephant Online, you can also customize the game rules to either speed it up or slow it down, based on your group size. (For example, you can limit the number of steals per turn, or how many times a given gift can be stolen over the course of the gift exchange)
It’s inexpensive! Starting at just $49 per game, you likely won’t need to get big budget approval. Compared to the cost of throwing a full-blown, in-person celebration, White Elephant Online is a steal, while still providing a truly fun and memorable experience. With a sliding price scale based on the number of attendees, it’s the perfect way to bring together small, medium and large teams.
How do you play White Elephant virtually?
White Elephant Online offers a platform to host virtual white elephant parties. You can play with as few or as many people as you’d like!
You can easily create a game and invite your colleagues. Everyone will pick and submit a gift virtually ahead of game day. If your company would rather choose and cover the costs of the gifts, we have tools to do that too! On the day of your event, get everyone on a Zoom call (or any video conferencing tool of your choice), share your screen, and play the game! The gift-swap engine will assign everyone numbers, allow you to unwrap and steal to your hearts’ content, and then at the end tell everyone who to ship their gift to. We also offer other ‘gift distribution options’, such as sending e-gift cards or having a central admin send gifts, which protect employee privacy. Check out more about how white elephant online works.
Take it from the thousands of companies that use White Elephant Online each year: a White Elephant party is easy, fun, and it’ll make this holiday season a little more jolly around the (virtual) office!