If you’re not in charge of the Secret Santa yourself, who is? Make sure this person is a willing participant, as the whole event can turn into organisational chaos if their heart isn’t in it.

Now for some organisational ground rules: you need to begin by setting a budget. Consider who works for you and how much is likely to be feasible. The ethos behind Secret Santa is to make it fun, not overly lavish or unattainable. At the same time, you don’t want to set a budget that’s impossible to work within. As a simple guideline, try aiming for around £10 to £20.

Next, you need to email everyone in the office and ask them if they’d like to take part. You can do this by issuing a survey (make sure it isn’t anonymous), or simply by asking them to RSVP with their ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. Make it clear that there are no repercussions for not taking part. There may be some people in the office who do not celebrate Christmas at all, which makes forced participation offensive as well as uncomfortable.

Give the email a few days, and then send out a quick reminder to those who have not yet responded. Let them know that there’s a response deadline, and if you don’t hear anything by then you’ll assume they don’t want to participate.

Making Sure the Secret Santa Stays Secret

Once you know who is taking part, write their names down on individual pieces of paper, scrunch them up tightly, and place them in some form of bowl or basket. Let everyone who is taking part draw a name from the hat and ask them not to look at it until they’re away from everyone else. If they all take a peek with each other around, knowing smiles might start giving the game away.

You also need to make it clear that nobody is to reveal their choices to anyone else. If your office is fairly small, it only needs a few exchanges for a quick process of elimination to take place. When that happens, the Secret Santa isn’t secret, which means it’s no longer fun. When all the participants are rounded up, make sure you set a day, such as the last day in the office.

Finally, when it comes to the gift-giving day, you can further the secrecy by asking everyone to write names down on the gifts and place them on a table. Everyone can then collect them and unwrap them. After this, your employees should probably be free to decide whether they want to reveal who purchased what.

Secret Santa Gift Ideas

Secret Santas are usually fun, unless you find yourself stuck for gift ideas. The chances are, there’s more than one person in your office losing a little sleep over what they should be buying. Therefore, they could do with some inspiration.

Gourmet gifts usually go down well, but you should make sure the recipient doesn’t have some form of intolerance or allergy before buying something. Winning hits include cheese boards, chocolate pizzas, and good quality wines. Some places even sell relatively inexpensive hampers, or you could make one yourself within budget.

Candles might seem a little thoughtless, but there are some scents available that’ll play to the tastes of most recipients. This includes candles that smell like wood fires from Molten Brown, or Christmas scents from practically anywhere.

Then there are those novelty items that people wish they have, but never get round to buying. For example, a keyring that alerts you to where your keys are when you make a particular sound. Most people have been in the situation of not being able to find their keys, so this one is a simple budget hit. Less common sense ones include gloves you can use with an iPhone, digital luggage scales, and emergency hand warmers. You can get all these items from stores like the Gadget Shop, and you need to choose them according to the recipient and what they’re likely to love.

However your office Secret Santa goes down, do remember that the aim is for everyone to have fun. Don’t take the process too seriously and it’ll stay as an enjoyable way to say goodbye to everyone until next year.

For information on office gift giving read our Corporate Gift Giving Tax Guide