In this world of VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity), CHROs are embracing SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud) to focus on their priorities of managing a culturally and geographically diverse workforce. The modern context has provided many opportunities and challenges around building a learning organization; driving organizational culture, policies, processes across geographies; providing flexibility, learning and growth opportunities to a more demanding workforce for the CHROs. 

Does organizing parties still hold some merit in this new context? 

Retaining some of the traditional practices continues to create value. While employees and HR give an immediate nod to the idea of parties, business often questions the benefits of organizing them. Apart from the excitement and joy which celebrations and parties bring along they do help in building a team spontaneously. 

Cross-team interactions: Daily work confines our interaction to our own team members. Deadlines and work pressures limit our thoughts to getting work done and aligning our team members towards project/work objectives. Parties and celebrations give us an opportunity to look beyond the immediate team and befriend people in other teams/departments. Games which are designed for cross-department teams or which encourage reaching out to more people just aid in this objective. 

Knowing your leaders personally: Employees are awestruck by their leadership and often find it difficult to strike a conversation. Such informal events are also an occasion for the leaders to know their teams better. These are occasions when hierarchy gets dissolved and real talent touchpoints are created. 

Building connects: To some people, it comes easily while for others it takes some time to build. Not to miss those rhetoric conversations around introverts and extroverts and how extroverts can connect easily. As an organization, it is our responsibility to provide enough platforms to people to connect and identify common interest areas and opportunities. Such occasions where people are not very focused on their images and ready to share their memories and a part of them provide the fertile soil for the seed of relationship to grow. 

Having fun: The old saying “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” still holds its relevance. Recreation helps the mind to defocus and then focus again on a different perspective. 

What we certainly need to do to keep the parties relevant is to consciously be aware of the benefits we are expecting by organizing these parties and design games which would help us achieve our objectives.