Team Christmas presents when working from home

[Globalpandemicmum]

I manage a small team of 7 people within a bigger company. Normally at Christmas I treat the team to breakfast followed by a round of drinks at the pub that evening.

I want to show my appreciation for their hard work as usual but given everyone is working from home I have no idea how.

Any ideas?

Where I work is donating all the money normally spent on staff entertainment to food banks.

@Clymene that’s lovely and something I am now going to suggest our company do with the Christmas party budget. This is just a small token that I personally pay for.

Oh sorry, totally missed the bit where you work for a bigger company!

What's your budget per head?

We're a remote team and my manager sent me a letterbox chocolate box last year. It was a lovely surprise.

One of the managers at our place is sending her team mini nibble hampers from M&S and doing a short zoom chat on the day the arrive with the idea that people can have one of the beers or snacks when on the call with their team. Might work?

My boss sent us all a box of cupcakes to our homes on his 50th during first lockdown (we'd usually have done something in the office for a milestone birthday).

Letterbox posh biscuits from the Biscuiteers or similar or if your budget is higher, food hamper each?

There’s loads of companies arranging gifts to be sent out - cocktail making classes, alcohol delivery, chocolate etc.

I’ve arranged separately a secret Santa. Used drawnames ao that names are allocated and also Amazon Wishlist. There’s a way you can set these to public and hide your address, so people can send you things off your list - if this is something you’d like to do or consider and not sure how, I’m happy to share the instructions. Took me a while to work it all out, but it has been very easy for the whole team to navigate.

Since I’ve been a manager I’ve bought all my team a scratch card at Christmas. Nobody’s won more than £20 yet but it’s always possible!