Ending 2021 with a Blast! How We Celebrated a Remote-First Christmas Event in Style

As a remote-first team spread across Berlin, London, Paris, and Dublin, we habitually socialize with our colleagues online (via our trusty webcams) – whether it’s to grab lunch or attend a fitness class together. 

However, we don’t often get to meet in the flesh. That’s why we always jump at the chance when it comes to celebrating company milestones or seasonal events together (Covid-permitting). 

So, for our Christmas bash in December 2021, we made plans to gather the team in-person at our Berlin HQ and enjoy a delicious catered dinner. Unfortunately, our plans were scrapped by Covid-related restrictions, following the recent Omicron outbreak and rise in Covid cases. Like many other companies, we had to reconsider our company meeting plans and quickly adapt. 

Fortunately, our People Human Nina came up with a fun plan B in a matter of days. By hosting our Christmas dinner virtually and throwing in some engaging group activities, we were able to enjoy some quality time together – while ensuring the safety of the HiPeople team during the pandemic. We thought we’d share what we got up to during the evening!

We hope that the following highlights from our Christmas bash will inspire you to try these remote activities with your own team – and to join our team, by applying for one of our many open positions (hint, hint — we’re hiring! 😉).

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The Event Lead-Up

A few days in the lead up to the event, Santa surprised our team with some mystery packages to get us into the festive spirit! Amongst other goodies, they also contained a Santa hat and warm Alpaca socks – which we also donned during our team event, keeping in-theme and warm.

5 pm: Getting Centred with a Meditation 🧘

To get centered after our working day, we took some time to regroup and wind down as a group. We joined Berlin-based meditation coach Eddie Vero for a nurturing and grounding meditation session.

We practiced letting go of our thoughts, by focusing on our own deep breathing. Listening to Eddie’s guided meditation, we practiced being present and in the moment – which led us to instantly relax.

We left the session feeling refreshed. Plus, many studies show that meditation can help people focus their attention and sustain it. So, meditation proved to be the perfect reset ahead of another team activity that required a fair amount of concentration….

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6 pm: Playing a bar trivia, while refueling with a delicious meal 🌯

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Next, it was trivia time! It proved to be the perfect occasion to dust off all of that general knowledge which we picked up over the years.

The quiz was led by Julia, our fun and engaging host at Bar None Games, who ushered us into a Zoom group call and split into three random teams. Shortly after being handed our questions, we were ushered into separate Zoom rooms with our teammates after each round. We were then given limited time to answer them.

Across three trivia rounds, we were tested on a variety of topics ranging from music and pop-culture, down to geography and history. Needless to say –  we really enjoyed the adrenaline rush of the bar trivia quiz! The game prompted some healthy competition amongst and equally, it fostered camraderie amongst team members. It let our creativity and collaborative streaks run wild – for example, when it came to naming teams, such as: “Vegan cats and dogs”, “Nicole and the Elves”.

In true bar trivia fashion, we were drinking, snacking, or eating during the game – enjoying our delivery meal of choice on the house. Pizza and sushi proved to be too popular options to accompany the Glühwein.

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7pm: Mingling and chatting over virtual drinks 🥂

To conclude our evening, we continued to spread festive cheer over virtual drinks with a casual chit-chat. 

Amongst other things, we learned that all of us are fans of festive, pop Christmas music (yes, including THAT Mariah Carey song and Wham’s iconic “Last Christmas” ), bar a couple of exceptions. While this was a divisive topic, we definitely got to know our team members better and learned about each other throughout the evening – especially as we had some recent new joiners and soon-to-be members of the team.

Overall, we had a jolly good time – and we are happy to have had the chance to celebrate our 2021 milestones together! 

This event was a great way to wrap up an exciting and eventful year for HiPeople – from seeing the team grow (four new joiners in the last month alone), to launching new impactful product features and working with fantastic new users around the globe.

Next, we look forward to celebrating the holiday season with our loved ones, and coming back to work in January feeling refreshed and ready for the year ahead!

Join Us for Our Next Team Event?

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So there we have it — some highlights from our virtual Christmas event which we hope have inspired you to try something similar. 

As we plan to grow and expand the team even more with new hires, we look forward to hosting more fun events – whether virtual or in-person – in 2022.

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If you’d like to join us in the future, take a look at our open positions here and apply now. We’d love to hear from you!