Spooky ghosts and goblins, costumes, and candyHalloween is one of the best excuses all year to knock off work for a day and celebrate. For companies, Halloween is rapidly becoming one of the best and easiest opportunities to build morale, reward employees, and throw a great office partyall while finding an alternative to expensive year-end celebrations.
"More corporate clients are doing some type of Halloween celebration. I don't know if it's always in place of Christmas, but it's definitely something they are doing as big as the traditional office holiday party," says Deborah Borsum, a certified special events planner at Chicago-based The Meetinghouse Companies Inc. "You don't necessarily have the religious connotations to work around, and people are so busy at Christmastime. We've watched a trend to either do something like this instead or to move the holiday party into January."
Borsum planned a Halloween party last year for an office products company that was a day-long celebration complete with pet costume contests, pumpkin carving, and prizes for the best-decorated desks.
"I remember walking by one of their conference rooms, and there was a team of people having a meeting, but they were all in costume," she says. "It was a full-day event."
The day's main activity was a costume runway show in the building's lobby, complete with a professional emcee, music, and large video screens hoisted to broadcast the contest throughout the atrium. Needless to say, "a lot of work didn't get done that day," she says, but the celebration was a hit with employees.
"What makes it fun is that the holiday allows employees to show some creativity, and people can take advantage of a good sense of humor. The requirement is that senior management expects it to be a spoofy kind of day and that productivity is going to go down a bit but morale is going to go up," she says.
Halloween decor rental rates are often lower than those for winter parties, and there is less competition for local design companies. "That's one of the reasons it's growing so much. You don't need a large budget to do a Halloween event," Borsum says.
Companies that are replacing a traditional holiday party with Halloween typically apply the same budget, while companies that add a Halloween party to their calendars often spend 25 percent to 50 percent of their year-end party budget, Borsum says. Some companies choose to have the celebration on Oct. 31, but Meetinghouse planners are busy with Halloween parties as much as a week before the actual holiday, she says.
"There's a humorous and whimsical aspect to it, and people are into the fall season. The summer heat is over," she says. "People are in a festive mood, and it's a good time to capitalize on it and do something fun."
Originally published October 01, 2007
For more ideas, tips, and tools for better meetings and events, get Successful Meetings' weekly e-newsletter delivered to your inbox.