Planning your summer company picnic? Or are you already looking forward to your end of year celebration? Today we welcome Paul Metz of C+R Research to give you some inspiration. Paul was kind enough to take the time to share his thoughts and experiences with holiday parties and the other creative ways his company has fun and builds relationships amongst employees.
Q: Hi Paul! Thanks so much for taking the time to chat with us! As I understand it, your company has a pretty unique way of throwing holiday parties. You do an all-day progressive event that starts at your office, then moves to the next location for the afternoon and to a third in the evening, is that correct?
Yes, our annual holiday party begins in the morning in our office, usually by 9:30am or 10:00am. At noon, we all head to another venue for drinks, lunch and our “hosted” party, which usually wraps-up by around 4:30pm. Then the company sponsors an after-party at a nearby bar, usually until 7:00pm or 7:30pm. After that, those who are still standing will usually decide on yet another destination to continue the festivities.
Q: What types of locations do you go to?
Our formal holiday party (the part from 12:00pm – 4:30pm) is usually pretty close to our office, on Michigan Avenue. For many years, we held the event in a ballroom at the Intercontinental Hotel. In the past 10 years, we’ve varied the location in such places as Harry Caray’s, Fado, and the Signature Room in the Hancock Tower, which is where we’ve been for 3 of the past 4 years.
Q: What do you do in each segment of the celebration?
During the morning phase of our holiday party, which is in our office, different teams and departments host their own themed “stations” which can include drinks, treats, and games/activities. This is an all-volunteer effort – employees simply do this to bring fun and levity to the event, in their own style. The evening before the event, each team decorates their work area and typically sends out some sort of creative, humorous invitation. Across the company, there are probably around a dozen or so such “party stations” which supply ample treats and drinks for our 100-or-so employees. I’ve been hosting an eggnog bar in my office for 14 years, which always includes a batch of homemade eggnog – a family recipe. These morning hours are technically “work” hours, and most employees do get a little work done, in between visits to the party stations. During this time, the partners of the firm also distribute annual bonus checks, which really helps spread the cheer. It seems like the perfect time to reward our staff for all of their hard work and contributions during the year.
Once at the next venue, we typically follow a structured agenda: drinks & appetizers for an hour, followed by a sit-down lunch and a rousing and raucous speech by our president, Robbin Jaklin. Robbin does a great job recapping the successes of the year and thanking each and every department for their notable contributions. Immediately following lunch, we recognize and reward (and sometimes roast) employees who have marked a major anniversary during the prior year. After that, we call-up all of the year’s new hires, to perform a “mandatory” new employee skit – a long-standing holiday party tradition. And, we wrap-up this phase of the party with the always-popular grab-bag. The company purchases around 30 gifts, names go in a hat, and lucky winners walk away with some useful (or very odd) gifts. Always included among the gifts is a domestic round-trip airfare – a crowd favorite.
By 5:00pm, the crowd thins a bit for the after-party, at which there is no agenda, except mingling and having a good time. At the after-party, employees are welcome to invite a significant other, and we all enjoy meeting and mingling with those who are special parts of our employees’ lives.
Q: I’m very curious about these skits you do poking fun at yourselves. Are you at liberty to share a bit more about that? Any particularly funny/memorable moments?
The new employee skit has been around for several decades, and was started long before I joined the company in 1999. When new employees are hired, they are informed that they will be in a skit during the holiday party, to provide entertainment for the rest of the company. They’re not told anything else. As the date of the holiday party approaches, it is the new employees who have to self-organize and figure out what to do for the skit. The hidden purpose of the skit is to encourage the new employees to form relationships with employees across the company, in different departments – relationships that they might not otherwise form. Through working on the skit together, our new employees form personal bonds and also learn a little about other departments and job functions, through a fun, low-pressure project.
The skits vary every year. They tend to poke fun at idiosyncrasies in our office culture, and often portray funny characterizations of company management, riffing on individual personality quirks. None of the humor would translate well outside of the company; it’s all pretty much inside jokes. The efforts, though, can be quite impressive, including costumes, stage props, and multi-media. This year’s skit was loosely based on an episode of the TV show “New Girl” and included a half-dozen “spoof” TV commercials on video, filmed both in and outside of our office.
Q: What other things does your company do throughout the year to reduce stress, build camaraderie, and reward employees? And what results do you see?
We do a few other things to build a fun and collaborative culture. We have several employee-led efforts to support charitable organizations, including the Chicago Children’s Advocacy Center. We participate in their events, and also create our own events to raise funds for the organization – such as our popular Friday Afternoon Beer Cart. Volunteers push a cart filled with beer & wine around the office on one Friday afternoon each month, and donations are collected for one of our supported charities. We also hold in-office happy hour events every 1 to 2 months. Sometimes, these events are company planned and hosted, while other times we have different departments or teams organize thematic happy hours. We’ve had happy hours themed for various holidays (St. Patrick’s Day, Cinco de Mayo, Halloween) and one time, we even had an impromptu “Anarchy Day” themed happy hour, when it was discovered that most of the management would be out of the office one day. We want the staff to have fun together, and to know that we feel there is more to coming to work than only working hard. In our line of business, working hard is a constant, so we need to be intentional about building-in some regular fun.
Q: How does your company support/enable work-life balance?
Well, this is a tricky one. Our business is to jump when our clients ask us to jump. We don’t often have the luxury of determining project timelines and often, we encounter conflicting deadlines. To help cope with the ebbs and flows of project work, we structure in such a way to staff projects flexibly so that we can balance workload across teams. We are also generous with vacation, giving employees 3 full weeks of vacation in their second full year on the job. And, we are fairly flexible about allowing employees to work remotely, which helps them manage both their personal lives and professional commitments.
If you’re looking for a place to hold your next company gathering, Catalyst Ranch can help you arrange it all from the catering to the cocktails to the entertainment! We are proud to be named a finalist for Best Holiday Party Venue by the Best of Illinois Meeting & Events! Give the Catalyst Ranch Gala Girls a jingle and start planning the best party yet!
Q: And now a question for you, dear readers, how does your company make holiday parties fun and memorable? Share your answers in the comments section!
