Celebrating festivals at the workplace is fun, and can prove to be a great opportunity for the employees to connect with each other. This helps boost employee morale and encourages everyone to work as a team. Among the many festivals that can be celebrated at the workplace, Halloween is probably the most exciting one. This is because, it’s one festival that brings out the kid hidden within each one of us and together we can have lots of fun. The interesting games played on this occasion can offer you and your co-workers, a break from the daily work schedule. There are many ways to celebrate Halloween at work and have fun with your colleagues.

Ideas to Celebrate Halloween at Work

To have fun on Halloween, all you need to do is think of some innovative ideas to involve everybody in your office. Here you shall find some interesting ways to celebrate this unique fete at the workplace.

Decorate the Workplace
Now, this is important! You should decorate the office in accordance with the theme of Halloween. It is the best way to bring in the “feel” of Halloween to your office. You can be as creative as you want to, and use different Halloween themes for different areas within the office. This will encourage teamwork as everyone has to work together. If your office consists of many floors, each floor can be made to look different from the other. For example, you can give the look of an old castle to one floor and choose a haunted-house look for the other. You can even decorate your conference room table with interesting Halloween centerpieces. Keeping up to the spirit of Halloween, you and your colleagues can decorate individual desks and then ask the management to declare the winner, who then gets a prize. However, make sure that you do not scare anyone! And if the rules at your workplace forbid you to go all the way, then you can always keep it simple. Just stick a small monster on your monitor or keep a box of creepy candies at your desk!

Plan a Halloween Outing
This can turn out to be fun if you have like-minded colleagues who would love to enjoy the day visiting spooky places and haunted houses. Every city has its own share of scary places and visiting them on Halloween can be great fun! Some of these places even arrange for light-and-sound shows to take the eerie effect, a step (or many steps!) further.

Have a Halloween Costume Party
Most of you would agree that costumes are the essence of celebrating Halloween. So, why not have a costume party at the workplace? However, this doesn’t mean that you go against your company policy and end up at your workplace dressed as a zombie, even if your employer doesn’t allow you to! Just keep things simple and ask everyone to come dressed in costumes for the party and change to regular office attire before getting back to work. Announce prizes for the best costume, and also for few other categories such as the scariest costume, most innovative costume, funniest costume, etc. The more prizes you have, the better. If you do not wish to go for spooky costumes, then just sport a few Halloween-themed accessories and you are ready to go!

Arrange for Exciting Contests
Games and contests can be really exciting and a great way to bond with your colleagues and have fun together. Organizing a pumpkin-carving contest is a great idea on Halloween. You can even invite the kids of the employees, to be a part of the event. Just give each employee a pumpkin and a knife, and let them use their creative skills to transform an ordinary pumpkin into a work of art. You and your colleagues can also use paint to decorate the carved pumpkins. To choose the winner, let everyone vote for their favorite and then the one who gets the maximum votes, wins. Just make sure you exercise caution in using knives or other sharp tools used to carve the pumpkins. You can even turn the carved pumpkins into ‘jack-o’-lanterns’ and use them to decorate your home or the workplace.

Plan a Halloween Potluck
When it comes to food, a potluck is a great idea indeed! What makes a potluck so much fun is that you get to enjoy a variety of foods. If you plan for a potluck, then make sure that you inform everybody well in advance, so that they can plan things out. Make it a point to try your hand at different recipes for Halloween or better still, make some scary Halloween treats for everyone.

Playing games like ‘bobbing for apples’ or distributing treat bags and gifts to all the employees, is also a good way to celebrate Halloween at work. Besides, you can come up with innovative ideas of your own and celebrate this vista in your own unique way. So, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and make plans for a grand Halloween celebration at your workplace!

HARDWARE, SERVICES AND PRINTER INK FIRM HP has managed to make a decision about the future of its Personal Systems Group – the part that makes PCs, and will keep it.

The firm was not sure what it would do with the PC business while software and services man Leo Apotheker was in charge, but he’s not anymore, Meg Whitman is, and what she says goes.

“HP objectively evaluated the strategic, financial and operational impact of spinning off PSG. It’s clear after our analysis that keeping PSG within HP is right for customers and partners, right for shareholders, and right for employees,” said Whitman, HP president and chief executive officer. “HP is committed to PSG, and together we are stronger.”

The firm carried out a strategic review before making the decision. It is likely that this included some of the “Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat?” reactions and reports that came out at the time of Apotheker’s announcement, but HP would only say that it was a “data-driven evaluation”.

The result of the evaluation was a realisation that personal computers are tied to the HP business, contribute to its brand value, and would be much too expensive to spin off into a business of their own right.