Who’s ready to plan a spectacular Spirit Week that boosts employee morale and engagement? You are! Well, if you’re not quite ready now, then you will be after you check out these Spirit Week ideas for work – we love getting our custom-made swag for Spirit Week here.
We’ve got real-world examples of Spirit Week themes and ideas for every kind of team out there—small teams, large teams, formal teams, and more.
Want to improve your employee appreciation program this year?
What is Spirit Week for Work?
What is Spirit Week? That answer will be different at every company, but in general, it’s one week of concentrated employee engagement activities and events. It’s a time to celebrate accomplishments, bond with coworkers, prepare for new challenges, talk about new goals, celebrate company culture, and so much more.
Looking for something to do with your hybrid team?
These are five of our favorite team-tested activities to help managers engage fully remote and in-person employees:
Spirit Week Benefits
Now you may be questioning the point and purpose of Spirit Week. What benefit does it bring?
Remember all those pep rallies you went to in high school? Or maybe your school had a Spirit Week, and you have fond memories of that. Think about how those events made you feel, even if you rolled your eyes and cringed at the time.
No one can prove that those events helped you get top marks on your next exam or throw the winning shot during a basketball game, but the unity, engagement, and enthusiasm you picked up during those events might have inspired you to excel, even if the inspiration happened on a subconscious level.
Workplace Spirit Weeks do the same inspiring thing for employees; they help employees feel close to coworkers, engaged with the company mission, and enthusiastic about pursuing new goals.
Here are just a few examples of good things workplace Spirit Weeks can bring.
Laughter
All those Spirit Week activities will certainly inspire some laughter, which can reduce stress, boost immunity, and bolster resilience.
Tip: If you are looking for some help during your upcoming spirit week, try working with the pros! Laughter On Call works with professional comedians to engage your team in highly interactive games that will have benefits well beyond spirit week. Their customized events not only get your team laughing, but they also help people gain confidence, feel a sense of belonging and foster trust between coworkers.
Empowerment and Engagement
One survey about high-school Spirit Weeks demonstrates that festive events can help students feel empowered to perform well, participate more, and find happiness and fulfillment. A quote sampled from one of the survey respondents can apply to employees at any company as well as students:
“When students feel a sense of efficacy, they tend to be more involved, more in tune with the great opportunities which exist on their campus.”
Team-Building
Just one week of super-charged group activities can boost teamwork and build lasting workplace friendships, and that ultimately leads to enhanced communication, collaboration, and possibly employee retention.
Pro-Tip: If you’re on board for bringing more team-building into your office and you want experts to sweep in and handle all the details and planning for you, then you should definitely check out our friends over at Outback.
They make hosting engaging team-building activities, such as scavenger hunts and game shows, as easy as submitting an online form. (Expert game producers will take care of you every step of the way after that.)
Spirit Week Ideas
These Spirit Week examples and ideas should get you pumped up to plan your very own Spirit Week with your very own flare.
Spirit Week Ideas for Small Teams
Spirit Week ideas for small teams should be relatively inexpensive, easy to plan, and full of opportunities for high-quality bonding.
Spirit Week highlights:
- Fundraising for local and national charities (auctions, raffles, bake sales, and more)
Spirit Week highlights:
- Dressing up for the theme of the day
- Laughing during dance offs
- Playing water-balloon volleyball
- Participating in lip-syncing competitions
Writing on the Bandwidth blog, one employee says,
“When I think of Spirit Week, I think of Instagram-worthy costumes, team bonding over matching bandanas, and intense competition that makes you more anxious than the finale of The Bachelor.”
Additional ideas:
- High Five Everyone Day (Encourage employees to high-five everyone they see. If they come across someone they haven’t met, then they can introduce themselves and then offer the high five.)
- “Secret Cheerleader” Day (Co-workers pass each other anonymous notes, complimenting excellent work.)
- Founder’s Day (Remember and honor your company’s founder by enjoying some trivia about the founder, eating some of his or her favorite foods, and maybe even browsing some old photographs and film collections from the company archives.)
- Lunchtime games. (Ask everyone to bring in their favorite board games, and spend Spirit Week playing them as a group.)
- ‘Take 5’ games (Introducing team-building activities that take only 5 minutes of everyone’s time is doable for even the busiest of teams to participate.
Spirit Week Ideas for Large Teams
Spirit Week ideas for large teams can involve lofty fundraising initiatives, big events, and catered meals. Large teams have the bandwidth to make all these ideas successful.
BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina
Spirit Week highlights:
- Wearing ‘80s outfits like it’s 1985
- Doing flash mobs during employee meetings
- Having family nights to get everyone involved
- Collecting books for children
- Volunteering for Habitat for Humanity
How much fun did they have? See for yourself. Check out BCBS NC’s photo album.
MRI Software
Spirit Week highlights:
- Eating donuts served up by company leadership
- Dressing like Superheroes and enjoying seeing everyone else, including the company’s founder, in costume as well
- Enjoying delicious food
Additional ideas:
- Host a variety show. Here’s an idea from our post on team-building activities. This one’s easy to incorporate into Spirit Week.
- Host a LipDub challenge with help from the team-building experts at Go Game.
“Here at SnackNation, our culture committee hosts a variety show for our office. Similar to a talent show, at the event we invite our colleagues to share their special talents during a Friday evening open mic. Many people perform together which is a great way to bond over shared interests and show off their guitar skills or test new stand-up jokes.”
- Host “Spirit Awards” to recognize employees who do not just demonstrate spirit during Spirit Week, but also show their spirit throughout the year. Call out a handful of your company’s core values. Then, have other employees nominate co-workers to receive an award for exemplifying those qualities. For example, if “integrity” always tops your list of core values, then an employee might nominate a co-worker who has never cut corners in her creative work.
Spirit Week Ideas for Formal Offices
Spirit Week ideas for formal offices should focus on tradition. The events will still be fun, of course, but they won’t involve anything too quirky.
Spirit Week highlights:
- Enjoying a staff picnic
- Celebrating Christmas in July
- Living it up at a happy hour
- Joining mission-driven company presentations
- Golfing
- Coming together for a staff and family picnic
Additional ideas:
- Do some off-site brainstorming to keep Spirit Week mission-driven but also different from any other day at the office.
- Have a “job swap” day. Employees can get to know coworkers while also picking up a few new skills.
- Have a nice dinner out on the town.
- Do internal speed networking. Set up an event where employees talk to each other for one fast-paced minute at a time.
Spirit Week Ideas for Casual Offices
Spirit Week ideas for casual offices take advantage of that anything-goes mentality.
Spirit Week highlights:
- Wearing the colors in the company brand palette
- Donning shiny shirts, both homemade and store-bought
- Thinking about being green while also wearing green for “Going Green” day
- Going on a beach excursion
Additional ideas:
- Set up a “bring your pet to work day.”
- Set up a “bring your kid to work day.” (Sure, it’s almost the same as the idea above, but each option could lead to radically different events.)
- Take a bus tour of your city. Wear company shirts so everyone knows who you are, and interact with people in your community. Tell everyone what you do and why you love it.
- Play freeze-tag in the local park. Anyone who gets frozen can free themselves by correctly answering some company trivia.
Spirit Week Ideas for Busy Offices
Spirit Week ideas for busy offices should include low-maintenance events that require minimal planning from event organizers and the participants. The events should also not take too long to do. Dress-up days find a niche in busy offices; employees can show up in costume but still get tons of work done.
Spirit Week highlights:
- Having crazy hair and/or crazy hat days
- Wearing team colors
- Dressing up in decade-themed costumes
- Wearing company colors
- Wearing pajamas to work
Additional ideas:
- Host weekend group yoga. People in busy offices may not be able to dedicate work hours to Spirit Week, but a relaxing weekend event will be doable, and it may even ease the stress of hectic office life.
- Work sprints.* Doing work faster than usual may not seem like a compelling Spirit Week idea at first glance. But in busy office environments, when time always flies before work gets done, finishing some work may just be the most fun everyone’s had all year.
- *You work sprint when you commit to an idea, only one idea, for a specified period, and focus only on getting from start (the idea itself) tothe finish (sending the result of your idea out into the world). Experts agree this process helps most people focus, evaluate idea viability, avoid procrastination, and make decisions.
Spirit Week Ideas for Creative Offices
Spirit Week ideas for creative offices should involve employees in the planning process.
Spirit Week highlights:
- Going to work dressed in activewear
- Performing acts of kindness during “Golden Rule Day”
- Celebrating “Black Friday in July” (a concept similar to Christmas in July)
- Planning in-store events for local customers
Additional ideas:
- Paint a group mural.
- Get together and rearrange some office furniture.
- Pretend you’ve been asked to brainstorm a new company slogan and enjoy an hour of open-ended, risk-free brainstorming.
- Produce your movie by teaming up with event producers at Go Game.
BONUS! Spirit Week ideas that work for all teams
- Competitions! Select a competition that makes sense for your company, something that gets everyone fired up. Some rousing competitions involve:
- Sales
- Cooking or eating
- Athletic tournaments
- Solving mysteries (The first team to find out who stole the refrigerator wins!)
- Office games. Universally loved by employees at all kinds of companies, games never disappoint. Every single person in the world can probably find a game to match their interests. Here are some you can try during Spirit Week:
- Video games (Have a gaming tournament, and encourage everyone to make brackets.)
- Lawn games. (Badminton or Croquet lend themselves perfectly to hilarious themes. And since almost no one is good at either of these games, everyone will surely laugh with each other.
- Board games. (We could list out a million subcategories of board games, too; you get the idea.)
- Athletic games
- Mental games (Trivia, debate, philosophy, and more.)
