The Christmas Party Survival Guide!

With the festive season well and truly upon us, we thought you might appreciate a quick survival guide to the work’s Christmas Party.  For most people, the Christmas Party is a perfect opportunity to let your hair down and celebrate with all your colleagues. However, for some, it might be a horrific reminder of what you said last year when you’d had too many glasses of wine! Hopefully our survival guide will help you enjoy your festive night out and not send a shiver down your spine!

• For those who will have a free bar at this year’s Christmas Party, please beware: research shows it can be impossible to just have one drink. Alcohol can turn off neurons in the brain which are meant to tell us when enough is enough. Make sure you eat something before you start on the alcohol and don’t overdo it. That second bottle of wine might seem like a good idea at the time, but think about how you are going to feel in the morning – especially if you are due in at work!
• Treat the event as an extension of the working day and try to be as professional as possible. If there’s something you’ve wanted to say to a colleague but didn’t have the courage to before, then saving it for the work’s night out might not be a good idea. You don’t want to say something you may regret at a later day, or show yourself up in front of your boss. And chances are your “judging” skills are not as good after a few drinks, so you really don’t want to hurt somebody’s feelings!
• Dress appropriately and find out what others are wearing or what the official dress code is. Save your revealing outfit for a night out with your friends, you don’t want to give anybody at work the wrong idea! Also be careful about flirting with the office hottie….You don’t want to be the subject of the office gossip the next day, or worse still have a harassment case on your hands!
• Remember to mingle with everybody and don’t just stay with your close friends. The work’s Christmas Party is the perfect opportunity to talk to people you might not normally talk to at work and to get to know them a bit more. Treat it as a perfect networking opportunity and to make yourself known at work – for all the right reasons of course!
• Try to relax and have a good time. Talk about something other than work and show your colleagues that you do have a personality outside of work! Allow yourself to let your hair down, get into the holiday spirit and get to know your colleagues in a more relaxed environment.

And finally, plan your journey home in advance so you are not stuck at the end of the night and to ensure you get home safely. Try to share a taxi with a colleague, and if you can’t then pre-book one with a trusted taxi service (there are some services that only deal with female passengers). But most of all…….ENJOY!