Your employees work tirelessly to make your visions come to life the entire year and make your business grow. They think of the office as a second home. They’ve created bounds at work that’ll stay with them forever, and they’re grateful for all you do for them.

Now that Thanksgiving is just around the corner, it’s the perfect chance to show your employees that you think of them as a family too. Shower them with love and tell them how much you appreciate their hard work and efforts.

Here are ten creative ideas that can make thanksgiving celebrations extra special for your office this year.

1. Arrange a Team Activity

Workplaces are so uncreative when it comes to organizing team activities. The best we can think of is lunch or dinner. Well, that’s B-O-R-I-N-G! This year try to come up with something a little more exciting. How about this! Each staff member brings in a small creative gift of gratitude; it doesn’t have to be anything major. A cute pen or a tiny turkey keychain would do just fine. These gifts can then be assigned to other members. Surely, this will bring tears of joy to their eyes. After all, who doesn’t want to feel a bit special during the holiday season?

2. Create a Wall of Gratitude

This activity is a Thanksgiving version of Secret Santa. It’s pretty simple and you won’t need anything special to pull this off. All you need is a bowl or a hat and multiple slips of paper. Write each person’s name on at least three slips of paper and mix them up. Everybody draws three chits from the bowl; they can redraw if they get the same name twice. Once that’s done, everyone writes a note for the names they got, including what they are thankful for about that person. The last step is to put all the notes on a wall, where the employees can search for their names and read what their colleagues wrote for them.

3. Play It Out

An interesting idea for an office celebration could be arranging a play to portray the company’s history. You can get some employees on board who have a knack for the dramatics or performances. They can sit together to write, rehearse, and perform the play in front of the employees. The performances can include stand-up comedy using company jokes, games and much more.

4. Organize Festive Games

Doing some physical activities is the best way to boost your mood, and an elevated mood is just what’s right for the holidays. You can take them out to a farm and play Pumpkin Bowling. You can also go on a pumpkin hunt; whoever finds the largest pumpkin wins. You can take some advantage of the field trip and have a lunchtime party on the farm. Later, when everyone is well fed and rested, you can begin a company-wide tournament, which different competitions. All the winners can be presented with gifts later.

5. Host A Cooking Contest

What’s a Thanksgiving without a table loaded with turkey, pies, potatoes and all kinds of mouth-watering meals. All the passionate chefs on your team are most probably waiting to put on their toque Blanche and get started with cooking for friends and family. A great idea for an office celebration is that you challenge them to a cooking competition. Indeed, they would want to prove their skills in front of their colleagues as well. They can bring the cooked items from home and you can display them in the café where everyone can take a bite and write the score on the scorecards. The chef with the most loved recipe wins.

6. Encourage Volunteering

Thanksgiving is about more than just amazing food. It’s about showing gratitude for everything that you have in life and to give back to the community. As an employer, you can make sure that your employees have the time on this day to give back. Give them the day off, and encourage them to volunteer at a shelter, an orphanage or anywhere they want. They can share the pictures of their day in the office, which can be displayed for everyone to see. This will boost everybody’s holiday spirits.

7. Serve as a Group

When your company observes so much success, it’s only fair that you and your employees play your part in serving the community. You can hold a food drive, build birdhouses in a park or serve in a soup kitchen; anything is fine as long as you’re doing your best at it. This is the activity, however, isn’t entirely selfless; it will help your company gain a lot of positive PR.

8. Arrange a Community Event

This year you start thinking on a larger scale. Give your company more exposure by sponsoring a community event. Invite people from all over town to a sports festival or a carnival. It will take quite some planning to pull this off successfully, so make sure you involve your entire team. The proceedings from the event can be forwarded to a charity your employees mutually agree on.

9. Send Cards

In case you’re all working from home because of the pandemic, don’t worry; you can still make your employees feel special by sending customized thanksgiving cards to their homes. If you feel that extra spirit and your budget allows it, maybe you can send a pumpkin pie along with that card. This will definitely bring a huge smile to everybody’s faces.

10. Decorating Contest

One way to bring in the thanksgiving spirit to the office is to host a decorating competition. Ask all employees to decorate their workstations in a thanksgiving theme. Provide them with the same material, so it’s not unfair to anybody. They can create cute little Styrofoam turkeys, pumpkins and whatever their hearts desire. After they’re done, you can judge who did the best, or everyone can vote on the winner.