How to Celebrate Halloween at Work?

For many, Halloween is a holiday for children and university students. But in recent years (we can thank our American friends for this), Halloween is something used by pubs, clubs and workplaces to temporarily escape the horrors of adult life, *sigh for awful pun*.

Ways to celebrate Halloween at work

Celebrating Halloween at work can be a great way to break up a monotonous work week and give your team a great excuse to bond outside of the people they work with day to day. Yes, it’s silly and often pretty cringe but if you show the team you’ve put time and effort into putting it together, they’ll likely appreciate it and want to get involved.

And if they don’t get involved? Well, you have a mountain of chocolate eyeballs to get through for the rest of the month.

Here are a few Halloween party ideas for adults:

01. Halloween movie night

Set-up a projector, grab some popcorn and pull up a few bean bags. A movie night showing of old classic Halloween films is a great low-effort move that requires little budget, set-up and can be enjoyed without alcohol, making it accessible for everyone.

02. Straight-up Halloween party

Get the team relaxed and dancing to blow off some serious steam. Think blood-coloured punch bowl, spooky Halloween playlist (check out Glamour’s top spooky songs) and costumes.

As with any workplace party that involves drinking and late nights, prepare for a drastic drop in productivity the following day. So perhaps shoot for a Friday!

03. Don’t forget the decorations

Halloween is all about the spooky atmosphere. You can create this at work by decorating your office or workspace. Put up some streamers in orange and black, splatter some bloody handprints on the glass and add some Halloween-themed decorations.

Got remote or hybrid workers? Send them a small value on a gift card and allow them to decorate their space too.

04. Get pumpkin carving

This is a classic Halloween activity. Invite the team to sit around a table carving pumpkins for an hour for a crafty, and alcohol-free, way to mark Halloween. Order pizzas and have a selection of sweet treats and allow people to relax and catch-up. Why not see who can create your logo without using a template? Our bet is on marketing getting this spot on.

05. Have a Halloween-themed buffet

Food is always a great way to bring people together, so why not have a bring a dish day? Share some Halloween treats and allow people to bring what they wish. You could also tie this into donations for a charity of your choice – Collection Pot is a great way to collect for charity, as well as group gifts.

Halloween costumes for work

When deciding what Halloween costumes to wear to work, it’s worth thinking carefully.

On the one hand, you want to show you’ve made an effort and thought outside of the box, and on the other, you want to ensure your chosen outfit will definitely not offend anyone. Notable celebrities and politicians have got into hot water by failing to keep up with the times and recognise that their culturally appropriated or down-right offensive Halloween costume was in poor taste. Lack of consideration and appearing out of touch is never a good look. Especially in the workplace.

Our suggestion? Play it safe with a middle of the road ghoul-like character in the workplace. Sorry to sound boring, but it’s hard to go wrong with witches, ghosts, black cats, zombies… you get the idea. Or, if that’s painfully boring, take a big sitcom or TV show of the year that offers some space to play. For example, thanks to its roaring success you can buy (or makeshift) Stranger Things Halloween costumes. Our Halloween at work ideas hopefully helped to bring some inspiration.

The bottom line is, put in effort, plan ahead, think about making it accessible for everyone in the office and above all keep it respectful. Have fun!

Elaine Keep

Elaine Keep is an accomplished content writer with over 15 years of experience in the field of marketing and content creation for many leading brands, where she shares her passion for research and helping others through her articles. You can also find her in 'mum mode', walking in the countryside or enjoying the dreamy combo of a new non-fiction book with a tea and chocolate bar to hand.