I got an email earlier today that made me chuckle a bit.
Apparently, many offices around the country have gotten into the Olympic spirit. SurePayroll hosts a Winter Olympics, which has an amazing five days of competitive departmental games, such as Scrabble, Wii boxing, bean bag toss, and Apples to Apples. Some of the other features include an Olympic village, which is created by having the cafeteria converted into an arena outfitted with free healthy snacks like fruit and granola.
Sounds like a lot of fun.
Have you participated in or hosted an "Office Olympics"?
(There was a slight misunderstanding surounding the nature of the "Office Olympics" e-mail I received the other day. I originally posted that the e-mail was intended as a sales pitch. It was not. It was a PR message intended to "spread the good word", so to speak.)
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2 comments:
Actually, I am the Office Manager that created the Olympics at SurePayroll. It is probably one of the easiest, yet most gratifying events I have hosted in our offices in my continued effort to raise morale during the busy season. Anyone with decent organizational skills can pull it off. No consultant necessary!
A few tips for those interested in bringing this concept to your offices:
1) Realize your demographics. When choosing events, I consider that we have pretty large younger crowd here. Therefore, I tend leave at least one or two spots each year for whatever the current hype seems to be. Last year was "Apples to Apples" and the year before we did "Sudoku" However, we also have a few very classic games that I know will touch a bit of our older crowd such as Texas Hold'em and Scrabble.
2) Keep a leader board and send out to the staff via email after each day's events. Not only, will this will help those unable to actually participate still stay connected to the games but it will generate more team spirit as certain teams begin to excel.
3) Generate excitement weeks ahead of the games. I always give a preview in the company meeting announcements a month in advance. I then send out the schedule and request competitors to be registered one week prior to the event. This allows for some pre-Olympics friendly banter amongst the departments.
As long as you are committed to the success of these events and you can maintain a level of organization and continued enthusiasm, Olympic games can certainly be an easy way to bring a little fun and spirit back into your office.
Thanks for your comment Patricia!
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