With Halloween fast approaching, we wanted to share some of our ways for bringing a little fun and holiday spirit into the workplace.
Decorate!
Office decorations are a great way to boost morale and provide a little change of scenery. No need to go too over-the-top, but a few fun decorations can go a long way in building excitement and bringing everyone together.
For an environmentally-friendly option, consider asking employees to bring in any old Halloween decorations that they may have lying around to contribute to the collection.
Hold a Costume Contest
Elaborate costumes could potentially be distracting, but leaning into the holiday spirit and showing your employees that you can loosen up for a day is not such a bad idea. Studies show that happiness leads to a 12% increase in productivity, and for some getting to express themselves and wear that Lady Gaga costume they have been planning for months will certainly increase their happiness levels. Plus, it’s sure to provide some good laughs.
Of course, always make sure to include a brief refresher of work-appropriate costumes. Here’s a helpful guide.
Conduct a Themed Sales Competition
A themed sales competition can be a great way to promote productivity while still encompassing the holiday spirit. Additionally, including Halloween-themed treats (and even tricks) as prizes adds a unique touch and could contribute to higher engagement.
Read on to learn about our “Trick or Treat” sales competition.
Trick or Treat Sales Contest
This sales contest is based on our “Gift Swap” layout, in which managers can fill boxes with gifts for sales reps to randomly open when they complete qualifying activities. For instance, if the manager chooses that each sale or each offer sent qualifies to open a gift, then once the sales rep completes that activity, the will have the opportunity to select a gift (in this case, represented by pumpkins). Before a gift is opened, it is marked with a question mark. After a gift is opened, the prize will be shown, along with the user who owns that prize.
To make things even more interesting, it is possible to steal/swap gifts up until the competition ends. For instance, if it is your turn to open a new gift, but you prefer to try and steal someone else’s instead, you may select their gift instead of opening a new gift. However, you are not guaranteed to succeed at this and managers can choose the percentage chance of a successful steal/swap from 1–100%. The higher the percentage, the higher the likelihood of a successful steal/swap.
When the time runs out on this competition, the prizes are then locked and should be awarded to the winners.
Running the Halloween Sales Competition
We recommend that managers set up and begin running this competition at the beginning of October, and allow it to run throughout the month. Or, if you prefer, run weekly contests awarding prizes each week until the end of the month to make things more interesting. Some prizes are great to reward on October 31, but perhaps some of the other ideas below should be awarded before Halloween.
"Trick or Treat" Halloween Sales Competition from Dogu on Vimeo.
Halloween Treats
While candy is the obvious choice and allows for very inexpensive and fun sales contests, we suggest staggering the prizes a bit so that there are some medium/big items as well as some smaller items. Here are a few examples of prizes:
- Bag of candy
- Starbucks gift cards (Mmmm Pumpkin Spice Latte, anyone?)
- Seasonal craft beer
- Tickets to a haunted house
- Movie tickets
- Gift card to a local Halloween or costume store
- Buy a Halloween costume for the winner
- Desk decorated for Halloween
- Candy apple
- Seasonal beverage flavor of choice for kitchen/lounge area
- Money
- Pumpkin to carve
- Turn at bobbing for apples (or cash or other prizes)
Halloween Tricks
If you decide that you really want to put the “trick” in “Trick or Treat” this year, we’ve got some clever ideas. Remember, once someone completes a qualifying activity, they can swap gifts. So, consider adding one of these “tricks” into the mix and watch people scramble to complete activities to trade them away. Maybe too sinister, maybe a great laugh… we’ll let you decide.
- Clean up the office after the party
- Take out the trash
- Wash/put away the dishes
- Entertain at the Halloween party
We hope that this contest will inspire a lot of fun and laughs in your offices, as well as boosting performance on your KPIs. We’d love to hear your feedback about this competition, as well as any other ideas you may have.
