Office Holiday Party Etiquette

Alexandra Roberts on executive presence and social protocol

The office holiday party is the one evening of the year when everyone at a company agrees to pretend it is not work. Nobody quite believes it. The guides tell employees how to survive the night, and they are mostly right. They leave out the person whose behavior sets the temperature of the whole room, which is whoever is most senior in it.

Between 2018 and 2021 I was a host at Four Seasons San Francisco, and every December the ballrooms and private dining rooms filled with company parties, one after another, some small enough for a single private room and some that took over the ballroom. From the door you learn to read them quickly. Within twenty minutes you can usually tell whether a party will be a pleasant one, and the clue is almost never the decorations or the open bar. It is where the chief executive is standing, and how many people are pretending not to watch them.

Everyone is watching them.

Go, and arrive in the first half hour

You are allowed to skip it. If you do, tell your manager in advance, in one line, and leave it there; a long explanation makes an ordinary absence sound like a protest. If you go, arrive within the first thirty minutes. The people who notice attendance are usually the ones who arrived on time, and they will have stopped counting by nine o’clock. An hour is a perfectly respectable stay for most employees, and nobody will think less of you for leaving after it.

What to wear depends on the invitation and the venue more than on the season. A party in a SoMa office kitchen and a dinner in a hotel ballroom on Nob Hill are different events, even when the same company throws both, and I have written about reading the difference in dress codes explained. When the invitation says nothing, dress one notch above an ordinary Tuesday. Leave the novelty sweater at home unless the invitation asks for it by name.

Decide the number before you walk in

Every guide says to drink in moderation, which is sound and nearly useless, because moderation is a judgment you are asked to make with a glass already in your hand. Decide the number in the car. Make it one fewer than you would have at a friend’s party, eat something from the first tray that comes past, and alternate with sparkling water so your hand is never empty, since an empty hand at a party is an invitation for someone to fill it.

If you do not drink, you owe nobody a reason. Order a soda with lime and the question rarely comes up.

Talk to someone outside your team

The usual advice is to mingle, and it is right, though it tends to be framed as networking, which makes it sound like a chore with a business card attached. Think of it more simply. The person from finance you have only ever emailed will be a much easier email correspondent in January after five minutes of conversation about where they grew up. That is the entire return, and it is a good one. If you are unsure how to start, the room gives you material, a point I go into in how to make small talk at professional events. And if you blank on the name of someone you have worked beside for two years (it happens at every one of these parties), there is a graceful way through it.

Plus-ones

If partners are invited, give yours two names and one subject to avoid on the drive over, and then let them have a better time than you do.

Subjects that do not belong at the party

Compensation, above everything else. December is bonus season at many companies, and the holiday party falls in the same weeks, which means a surprising number of people in the room know a number they are not supposed to share and are one drink away from sharing it. Reviews and rumored reorganizations sit close behind. So does any colleague who is not standing there to answer for themselves.

If a senior person raises your performance, even kindly, thank them and steer back to the evening. Praise offered over a glass of wine is real. Answering it with a question about your promotion spends it in about four seconds.

If you are the most senior person in the room

This is the part none of the standard guides cover, and in my work it is the part that matters most, because a founder or chief executive at the holiday party is not a guest, whatever the invitation says. You are the host. The company is paying, the people are yours, and every employee in the room is quietly adjusting their behavior according to yours.

Drink less than anyone who reports to you. Arrive early and stand somewhere near the entrance for the first half hour, so that people can greet you on the way in and be done with it, rather than having to cross a crowded room later and interrupt you. Spend the next stretch moving, a few minutes with each group, and make a point of reaching the people who are least likely to approach you: the people hired in the last month, and the contractor nobody thought to introduce. Ask them something they can answer well. “Where were you living before this?” works. “How is the Q4 roadmap going?” is a performance review with canapés.

Then give a short toast, a minute or two, thanking people by team rather than by name so nobody is left out by accident; how to give a business toast covers the structure. And then leave.

Within ninety minutes, I tell clients, and most of them resist it, because leaving early feels aloof and staying to the end feels generous. I have watched both versions from the host stand more times than I can count. When the chief executive stays until the lights come up, the whole party stays on its best behavior until the lights come up, which means an entire company has spent their evening working a little longer. When the chief executive leaves after the toast, you can hear the room change within about ten minutes. The music gets turned up. Someone finally takes off their jacket. That second party is the one people remember fondly, and you gave it to them by not attending it.

Before you go, find whoever organized the evening and thank them by name, in front of someone else if possible. Settle the bar arrangement with the venue beforehand so nobody junior is left holding a tab at midnight.

Executives who come to me about executive presence usually picture it as something exercised in a boardroom, and I understand why. The holiday party tests it more honestly.

Leaving, for everyone else

Say goodbye to your manager and to whoever planned the party, and skip the full round of farewells, which turns your departure into an event. If you are deep in conversation, the cleanest exits are covered in how to leave a conversation gracefully. Do not be the last one there. The people still standing at the bar when the venue staff start stacking chairs are the ones discussed on Monday, and from the host stand I can tell you the staff remember them too.

Arrive early, leave before you want to, and say thank you to the person who booked the room.