The Best Ideas to Celebrate Thanksgiving in the Workplace

Everyone is aware of the essential components that you need for the ideal Thanksgiving meal: roast turkey, turkey stuffing with onions and celery, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, corn, dinner rolls, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. But what do you know about how to celebrate Thanksgiving celebrations at work?

Along with treating your staff to a sumptuous meal, you can express your gratitude and motivate them to participate in the community. We’ve put together a list of creative ideas to help you celebrate thanksgiving at your workplace. 

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13 Ways to Celebrate Thanksgiving in the Workplace

There are many ways to celebrate thanksgiving. So, without further ado, let’s explore the best ways to help you celebrate Thanksgiving in the office:

1. Organize a Thanksgiving Potluck at Your Workplace

Bring your team together with a potluck! Your Thanksgiving potluck can entail a variety of foods depending on the event you envision.

For example, your organization can provide the Thanksgiving turkey and ask team members to bring dishes as well as desserts. Make your thanksgiving celebration at work unique by choosing a theme. Getting creative with a theme could be as simple as asking people to bring their favorite Thanksgiving dish or exploring foods of other cultures.

It would be great if everyone could share their recipe for the dish they bring! In case of allergies or dietary considerations, this makes it easier for everyone to understand each dish’s ingredients. In addition, each employee can receive a special recipe booklet containing everyone’s recipes. 

2. Scavenger Expedition 

You can also organize a scavenger hunt if your team members prefer a more active Thanksgiving party than attending one that is focused more on food. For making this theme perfect for this Thanksgiving, you can adjust the list to include items such as an ear of corn, fall leaves, cornucopia, etc. By asking work colleagues to make the pilgrimage together, you can transform this into a team-building exercise.

3. Host a Gratitude Workshop

A constructive way to up the ante to celebrate Thanksgiving in the workplace is to invite a guest speaker to facilitate a gratitude workshop for your team. This powerful concept will enhance your Thanksgiving gathering or potluck.

Harvard Medical School has discovered that being thankful can actually increase happiness.

According to research, being grateful is strongly and repeatedly linked to being happier.

Gratitude improves one’s health, enables one to relish positive experiences, cope with hardship, and fosters strong interpersonal bonds.

4. Thanksgiving Theme Decorating Competition 

To take your thanksgiving in the workplace to the next level, you can choose to challenge each work group to decorate their area of the workspace. Set each group a spending limit so they can purchase party supplies and a theme to work with. Instead of having teams choose their own themes, for extra fun, assign each team a specific Thanksgiving-related word such as leaves, pie, corn, pumpkins, etc.) from a hat. They will need to exercise their teamwork abilities while having a great time.

5. Turkey Day Painting Event 

Make a reservation for a few sessions at a nearby DIY painting studio so that staff members can sign up to participate with a small number of their coworkers in creating their own special Thanksgiving masterpiece. You can also organize an on-site team painting day before Thanksgiving if your office has a space that can be transformed into a studio for artists. To help celebrate Thanksgiving in the workplace, you should bring in local artists to prepare easels, buy materials, and guide teams of participants through the process of bringing a seasonal work of art to life.

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6. Together, Give Back

Nothing can help you realize how much you have until you give back. Make it a point to give back as a team on Thanksgiving.

Several soup kitchens and food banks receive a surge of assistance during the holidays. The volunteer numbers and meals may then start to decline in January and beyond. Thanksgiving is a wonderful opportunity for a service day, but it’s also the ideal time to organize volunteer projects for the coming year.

Gather your team for a discussion to learn about the causes they really care about and support. Then, take into account what is best for your team members. This could entail organizing a quarterly volunteer day, providing a company match for charitable contributions, and supporting a food drive or fundraising event. You can also get in touch with nearby nonprofit groups to find out what their immediate requirements are.

7. Express Your Gratitude to Your Staff 

This Thanksgiving, you have a chance to show how much you appreciate your employees. A December holiday gift is customary for many businesses in the business world. But a modest employee appreciation gift around Thanksgiving can be a pleasant surprise! 

Ideas to celebrate Thanksgiving in the workplace and to express appreciation to your staff members include:

• Send e-gift cards to your employees for restaurants or coffee shops
• Send a flower or plant to a team member’s desk as a surprise.
• Plan a fun team outing during the week leading up to or following Thanksgiving, and make sure to send out a meeting invitation so that everyone can mark the time on their calendars.
• As a token of your gratitude, send your employees a heartwarming card.

8. Share Thanksgiving Traditions

This year, take your celebration at the workplace a step further by asking everyone to share their favorite Thanksgiving tradition.

Practicing active listening will enhance your company’s culture and help you learn more about your team members. It’s a great way to get to know your team members’ preferences, sense of humor, values, and upbringing by sharing Thanksgiving traditions. Even your own family’s traditions may come up in the conversation!

9. Make a Craft for Thanksgiving Together

There are Thanksgiving crafts for everyone in our lives, not just the kids. Building rapport with your team is easy when you do something creative together. You can start by looking at these ideas to celebrate Thanksgiving in the workplace. Make sure employees have access to the necessary materials by giving them a supply budget and allowing them to DIY over Zoom:

• Using flowers, pumpkins, succulents, and more, create beautiful table centerpieces. 
• You can line the walkway with autumn-themed paper lanterns that you make yourself.
• Maintain an all-year-round spirit of thanksgiving by decorating gratitude jars.

10. Make Wednesday and Friday Paid Holidays 

You might consider implementing a paid holiday in addition to Thanksgiving Day for your team on Friday after Thanksgiving. The day is likely to be taken off by many people already! Paying your employees with a holiday will boost their morale while minimizing their workload.

Several companies extend this offer to the Wednesday before Thanksgiving as well. If your employees have time to prepare Thanksgiving food, travel to see family, and tidy up their homes for guests, you may find that they come back more relaxed and refreshed.

11. Have a “Campfire” Party During Lunch

Not a fan of potlucks? Make lunchtime more fun by having a “campfire” party. Encourage your team to bond by offering s’mores and hot chocolate with candlelight. It’s often a hectic time of year, so offering your employees some sweet treats will help them relax. 

12. Watch a Thanksgiving Movie or TV Show Together

To celebrate thanksgiving in the workplace, Watch your preferred Thanksgiving movie or TV show to feel the Thanksgiving spirit! You can organize your viewing using an online streaming platform if your team is virtual. Or, you could meet in person and convert your office into a temporary theater!

An outdoor movie experience can be created if the weather is nice and there is a green area nearby. For a comfortable outdoor movie night, rent an inflatable movie screen and arrange pillows and blankets. 

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13. Why You Should Celebrate Thanksgiving in Your Workplace

You can use Thanksgiving as an opportunity to show your employees how much you care about their happiness. Thanksgiving is a holiday that focuses on being thankful for what you have. Your employees’ hard work deserves appreciation, so you can introduce new employee perks, or announce new benefits.

Consider these reasons why you should incorporate these Thanksgiving office ideas:

• Giving your employees a positive Thanksgiving experience enhances their employee experience.
• Employees should feel safe and inspired in inspiring, motivating company culture. You will improve the workplace culture by creating an inclusive Thanksgiving celebration.
• Employees tend to leave a job less often when they feel appreciated. You won’t see a direct impact on your retention rate from celebrating Thanksgiving alone – but it will help to build a sense of community among your employees.

Conclusion

Even though the holidays are a very hectic time for most teams, managers and HR specialists should make time for celebration at the workplace and showing their employees how much they are appreciated. Thanksgiving is the ideal opportunity to encourage team-building, which ends up going a long way toward making workers stay involved in their place of work.