10 DEI Holidays Activities to do With Your Team
Looking for ways to foster conversations about diversity, equity, or inclusion at your workplace?
The holiday season is the best time to bring your team together and participate in some DEI holiday activities!
DEI Activities can be a great way to learn more about your employees and how to support them. They can help foster a more welcoming and inclusive workplace. Promoting and encouraging participation in DEI events can promote higher employee engagement which will then result in an increase in business performance.
This is why it is important to keep up with DEI initiatives, and ending the holiday season with community-building DEI activities is a great way to motivate employees for what’s to come.
Feel free to mix and match and combine activities. The goal of the activities is to create an environment where diversity thrives and is inclusive.
Jump to your favorite idea:
1. The Iceberg Activity
A great way to start any work activity or session is with an icebreaker, and this first activity is called the Iceberg Activity. What do culture and an iceberg have in common?
Hint: Only a small percentage is surface level. The rest lies below the surface.
Meaning it is imperative to dig deep to understand someone’s cultural background and how it has impacted them. This activity involves answering questions to understand their culture and its influences better. This is a great way to start learning about your employees and which cultural, religious, or observances are important to them.
🎉 Check out this great resource for sample Iceberg Activity questions!
2. Holiday Cultural Potluck
What better way to connect than sharing food from one’s own culture?
A cultural holiday potluck is a great way to unite the workplace through food. Everyone can bring a special dish or dessert that is culturally important to them or reminds them of their upbringing, a traditional holiday meal for their culture.
Exploring global cultures through food is one of the best ways to unravel the stories of each individual through each dish you eat.
🎉 Use this delicious list of 23 Diverse Potluck Ideas for the Office!
3. Share Your Recipe
While a traditional holiday potluck is popular, it may be difficult for many organizations that are working remotely.
If that is the case for your workplace, consider having employees share their favorite recipes and tutorial. Recipes can be international and holiday themes to help encourage employee curiosity.
Employees can choose to pick a recipe from their own cultural background or be assigned a different country from which to source their menu item, and then everyone can enjoy the meals on their own time while expanding their global knowledge.
🎉 Here’s a few great recipe ideas to get you cooking!
4. Share the Story of your Name
Everyone’s name has a story, whether that be a funny one or a sentimental one.
For those in your team who feel comfortable or brave to share, this is a great time to learn more about your team members. You can even share a childhood nickname or a current nickname. or what you love most about your name.
Maybe their name comes from a family member or a movie character, a song, or even a chosen name.
🎉 You can use this handy list of name histories to get going!
5. Holiday DEI Book Club
Learning about different cultures and holidays can be done in many ways. Another one is by reading about them!
Does your team have a book club or have you ever thought of starting a work book club?
This is a great DEI activity to get many people involved. You can reconvene and discuss the books through the DEI themes presented. Literature great place to start if you are looking to liven your DEI meetings.
Here’s a quick list to get you started:
Too Many Tamales by Gary Soto, illustrated by Ed Martinez
This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism by Ashton Applewhite
The Legend of the Poinsettia by Tomie dePaola
The Loudest Duck: Moving Beyond Diversity while Embracing Differences to Achieve Success at Work by Laura A. Liswood.
🎉 Check out our list of books every Ally and LGBTQ+ Ally should read!
6. Holiday Kahoot Trivia Night
Take this opportunity to help your team members learn about different cultures and holidays across the world.
This can be general questions about DEI, such as terminology and global questions about cultural observances, or you can truly customize questions for your workplace.
🎉 Lots of great trivia platforms are available, such as Kahoot.
7. Snapshot Holiday Board
Attach pictures (can be holiday themed for this time of year!) to the board that spark diversity talks, then take turns discussing the significance of the photographs.
Encourage your team members to participate by bringing pictures as well. Family vacations, weddings, and famous landmarks are great ice-breakers.
🎉 If you want to turn it into a trivia game, there’s tons of options!
8. Inclusive Holiday DEI Calendar
Start your January 1st with an inclusive Holiday Calendar to ensure that during your year, you observe Holidays and days of acknowledgment that are meaningful to everyone on your team.
Make this a collaborative activity, and ask your employees to add observances that are meaningful to them on the calendar, virtual or in the office.
🎉 Sign up for our DEI Calendar today:
9. Spread Holiday Cheer by Helping Others!
If time and budget permit, think about ways to help your community. This can be done by volunteering your time as a company or donating to a local charity.
Some examples of places you can help out are at your local food bank, help at your local animal shelter, or even doing small acts of kindness around the workplace, and you never know how a small gesture can impact someone’s day.
🎉 Check out where to support Arab-American and Black communities.
10. Film Sessions
If you are looking for fun, diverse team-building activities for your workplace, film sessions are a great option.
Film sessions offer more interactive and bonding inclusion training sessions. For this activity, colleagues can choose a holiday or cultural film that promotes diversity and inclusion.
For instance, a cross-cultural movie will open up conversations about your team’s heritage. Films can be shown during lunch hour, a designated time during the day, or after work hours. This is a great learning opportunity to lead the team in discussing lessons from the film.
Looking for more DEI event ideas? Check out:
Don’t forget!
Participation Should be Optional
An important thing to note when conducting any DEI holiday activities is ensuring that participation is optional. The holidays can be a stressful and unnerving time for some, and not everyone celebrates this season the same way.
When planning for celebrations like holiday parties, for example, attendance should be optional.
Know your Workplace
It is important when planning out DEI holiday activities to have a general sense of employees’ interests. Knowing your employees and showing them a genuine appreciation for them and their interests, preferences, needs, and wants will build a sense of trust within your company.
The best way to know what your employees care about is to ask! Get in the habit of asking what kind of activities employees would enjoy participating in the workplace, such as team-based, virtual, etc., to make the activities as accessible and inclusive as possible.
This can be done through a online poll, a sign-up list in the office, or can be done by talking with your Employee Resource Groups.
Plan DEI Throughout the Year
Creating a diverse and inclusive workplace takes time and effort. It’s not an overnight process. Some of these activities can evoke different emotions in everyone, which can lead to valuable conversations which can help to create a conscious workplace that strives for equality and equity.
Diversity and inclusion training and activities are a great starting point for creating a workplace where all individuals feel like they thrive and belong.