
This holiday season, we wanted to ensure our employees could experience a workplace holiday party, despite not being able to gather in person due to Covid-19. The holiday “Party Planning Committee” (a.k.a. The Committee) really outdid themselves while making sure our employees were celebrated and recognized for their hard work. Collectively, the team harnessed their ho-ho-holiday spirit and provided what ended up being one of the best office holiday party experiences ever!
No, really, here is what employees had to say:
“I liked the competitions! And I liked the lunches. We should do those periodically every month.”
“The prizes were incredible.”
The week-long (online) festivities, which the team dubbed “Maveristmas”, was such a huge success that our employees are calling for a repeat for years to come! Ready to hear about what we did to “wow” our employees? Keep reading!
This article provides highlights from the week-long festivities. If you’re feeling froggy, have some technical skills, and want to take a crack at it…The Committee has published their technical “how-to” articles on the Maveris Labs blog, so you can learn how to host your own virtual party.
Okay, so what is Maveristmas? If you guessed a mashup of Maveris and Christmas, you are correct! But it was so much more. The week of festivities kicked-off with a simple unexpected email to employees:
“This year, in lieu of an in-person party (due to COVID-19) we are planning an entire week of holiday fun with big prize giveaways to celebrate all the hard work and dedication you’ve put into making Maveris a great place to work! There are nine big prizes, one grand prize, and participation prizes! Everyone who participates will win something, and some will win BIG!”
“Ooooh, what does this mean?” – said everyone reading the email with a smile on their face.
Little did we know, The Committee had created a series of online activities for everyone at Maveris to be able to participate in while working from home (and dispersed across the country). The festivities included daily competitions where employees could submit entries to be voted on by peers to earn points called “Magical Maveris Medallions” (MMM).
Read about how the team built a Slack App for Maveristmas.
Employees could even check their MMM balance to see where they, and everyone else, stood in the competition. The basic idea was that after each challenge, those with the most votes would place in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place and be awarded a specific number of MMM’s according to winning position.
The number of MMM’s each person had symbolized the number of entries for a chance to win prizes!
Learn how to tally medallions and draw winners using Google Sheets, Forms, and Apps Script.

The Grand Prize included a generous assortment of prizes and a (pretty awesome) Maveristmas tree ornament which was hand-carved by our CEO! (Pictured above).
But the best part was, employees could include their families in all the fun!
Ground Rules for the challenges: Each day a new challenge was released on Slack in a specially created Slack channel named “Maveristmas_Announcements” via a Google Form. The next day participants got another Google Form to vote for the winners from the prior day. Voters could not vote for themselves! (The Committee told us they could see if people voted for themselves. This could have just been a scare tactic though.)



Day three also had another bonus MMM’s opportunity! Everyone was encouraged to bring their favorite joke! (Safe for work, of course.)

