There are so many reasons why you shouldn’t have a New Years bash in the office and part of this comes from experience from the Christmas party and part of this is really just very obvious.
What are the reasons why you shouldnt be doing this?
Drink
Drink is certainly not something that you should mix in the office. There is nothing wrong with having just a few drinks with the office employees but I wouldnt say that you should go too far. I really would suggest you have a couple of drinks with the people you work with as it just improves the mood for the holidays.
Insurance
It had to be mentioned I’m afraid and although the insurance will cover many things that may be damaged from drink, fights and other things I am sure that not all office insurance policies will be happy to fork out hundreds and possibly thousands of pounds because the employees have been careless.
On top of this I will also say that a lot of small business insurance will not even cover you if you spill certain drinks like beer and wine over computers because those types of drinks are not generally acceptable in the work environment.
Personal Experience
This year’s Christmas office party was partly held here and although nothing got broken I certainly feel that if we didn’t move on to the pub when we did there would have been a fair few broken computers. Drinks were being passed around left, right and centre and it didn’t help that we had all had a couple of beers at the bowling alley.
Once again I must stress that if you have a few drinks whilst doing something like playing pool or having a game of poker there is nothing wrong. The problems only start occurring once people take the drinking too far and start to be careless of their surroundings.
Any Other Options?
Other than staying in the office there are actually many options out there to choose from. You could perhaps go for a paid trip to a restaurant and hit the clubs and all of the employees would happily go out if they know their food is paid for. Something like this is really great as you get to see people for who they really are, a couple of drinks is all it takes really. They certainly shouldn’t use any information they gain from the drinking session against you so make sure this doesn’t happen.