The holidays are a unique opportunity to leverage the festive spirit for internal messaging and improve employee experience. It can be overwhelming when faced with endless content ideas so we’ll kick you off with our top 13 festive internal communications content ideas for your workforce.
What engaging holiday content to post on internal communication channels?
Here are some ideas for communicators who want to create engaging content that will resonate with their workforce over the festive period.
- Host a photo competition
- Use the 12 days of Christmas
- Share festive work-from-home photos
- Spotlight star employees
- Create a company trivia quiz
- Start a countdown
- Share employee rewards and perks
- Show yearly results and KPIs
- Share discounts
- Invite staff to a shared Christmas playlist
- Display content on cultural differences
- Volunteer ideas and locations
- Show how charity or fundraising efforts are progressing
Host a photo competition
Get into the holiday cheer with some friendly competition. Give awards for categories like working-from-home desk decorating competition, a best dressed Christmas tree competition, a gingerbread house making competition — the opportunities are endless. This is a great chance to involve your remote workers as well.
Tip: Share a photo montage on your workplace digital screens or on the intranet
Use the 12 days of Christmas
Use the 12 days leading up to Christmas to share 12 key pieces of content. Ideas for what to show include messages from the senior leadership team, stats on company performance for the year, company objectives for next year, a recap of highlights and funny moments in the year.
Depending on your content, the perfect communication platform or channel will vary. If it's mainly visual try digital signage or digital noticeboards around the workplace; if it's interactive try your workplace app or intranet site; if it's quite wordy, send it via email.
Share festive work-from-home photos
This is a great way to include your remote workers. You can prompt them with different categories like best and worst Christmas sweaters, Christmas home desk decorating, and snapshots of festive sights they see around their neighbourhood.
Tip: If you’re using Sharepoint for your intranet, integrate it with your other internal communication channels so photos and other information flows seamlessly – and reduces your workload!
Spotlight star employees
If you’re not already doing this, get started today. Use digital screens, your company intranet, or workplace app to give kudos to staff members who go the extra mile, live your company values, or do behind-the-scenes work.
It’s a great way to show your workforce you notice and appreciate their efforts, and it’s a great way to keep employees engaged. This works especially well for frontline workers.
This example uses the Profiles (Classic) slide template in Vibe
This example uses the Quiz (Multi-choice) slide template in Vibe
Company trivia quiz
Who doesn’t love a good quiz? Plus it can give your workforce a sense of belonging and engagement.
Approach each department or office and get everyone to participate. You could include it as an ice-breaker in your next company all hands meeting, remember to include your dispersed workforce too.
Questions could be about significant events, customer wins, funny moments, company values - the list could go on forever!
Start a countdown
You could be counting down to the last day before the holiday shut down period, a year-end company event, Christmas, or any holiday. Most workplace digital signage solutions will have a countdown feature or slide template.
This example uses the Countdown slide template in Vibe
Share company benefits
If your organisation gets perks or discounts from retailers, now’s the time to share it. Aside from sending it out in an email blast, you could also add it to your workplace digital screens to make sure everyone sees it.
Show yearly results and KPIs
The end-of-year is a great time to communicate the result of your workforce’s hard work throughout the year. Consult each department to get a list of metrics of success to share with the wider company. If you’re a manufacturer, this can include widgets produced; days without accidents; time saved; inventory turnover rate; products delivered on time and more. If you’re a retailer, metrics to show can include Net Promoter Score (NPS); average transaction value; customer retention rate; sales per employee.
Share discounts
Does your company partner with various businesses who can offer discounts accommodation, retail, experiences and more this Christmas? If so, make those deals known to your workforce and show them how they can redeem the offer. During this busy (and often expensive) time of year, every bit helps.
Invite staff to a shared Christmas playlist
Christmas tunes liven up the office and can be one great way to involve team members who are remote or aren’t always desk-based. Create a shared playlist using apps like Spotify and invite your team to add their favourite music or vote on songs for the playlist.
Display content on cultural differences
How your workforce celebrates the end of year festivities provides a glimpse of your diversity. In Maori culture Christmas means Whakawahanaungatanga or bringing the family together. The end of the year is celebrated so differently around the world so take this opportunity to share and celebrate cultural differences.
Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere is a lot warmer and sunnier than in the Northern Hemisphere!
Volunteer ideas and locations
Many organisations have volunteer programs and opportunities, and if not it’s the perfect time to extend your festivities to include volunteerism. Your organisation can donate time, money, tangible goods, and other resources to help organisations provide much needed help to others in society.
If you already partner with volunteer organisations, make it known to your workforce by sharing it on digital screens around the workplace, showcasing them on an email newsletter, or posting about them in the company intranet.
Show how charity or fundraising efforts are progressing
If your organisation is collectively working towards contributing to a charity or fundraiser, you can show how it’s tracking towards your end goal.
This example uses the Data (2 Dials) slide template in Vibe
Livestream events
You probably already have fun end-of-year events planned like a morning tea, a town hall meeting, team breakfasts or after-work drinks. Take that one step further and livestream these events so that everyone in the wider company can feel included! This works well if your workforce is spread across the country or have a lot of deskless workers.
Tip: If you’re a Vibe.fyi user, the Livestream slide template is perfect for showing videos and livestreams
Bonus: Theme your internal communication channels
Add a tinge of holiday spirit to your internal communications. Try designing a festive email header, changing the background of intranet pages, or switching up corporate screensavers.
Whether you are incorporating one or a handful of these ideas this holiday season, taking every opportunity to thank your workforce for
their hard work not only foster stronger employee engagement, but is also just the right thing to do!
Best practice for internal communications during the festive season
Plan in advance
Your holiday messaging should align to your strategic communication plan and business objectives. If you don't know what the workforce expect from internal communications during the holiday season, run a poll or survey in advance. Most workplace apps and messenging apps have built-in poll functions, but you can always find free poll tools online.
Be inclusive
Navigate the end of year holiday season with tact. It’s a great opportunity for raising better awareness around diversity, equality, and inclusion issues. If you use your intranet for DE&I campaigns around the holidays, you can create content including interactive event calendars, blog posts from your own employees, provide lists of educational resources, or create original content such as how-to guides on best cultural practices, or videos on how each nationality/culture celebrates the end of year.
Whether your company is operating globally, regionally or you have a mix of in-office and remote workers, this is a great opportunity to raise awareness and create meaningful conversations.
Make use of all your channels of communications
Keep the workforce updated and engaged by using all the weapons in your arsenal. Whatever your communication channel mix is — it could be the company intranet, emails, workplace app, digital screens around the office, screensavers — using the widest range of multichannel communication tools available guarantees message cut-through and engagement.
If you think your messages are letting you down or are unsure on what to say, we’ve outlined some tips on how to craft compelling and memorable messages.
