Fun Valentine’s Day Activities for Work: Ideas for Happy Employees
- By The FruitGuys
- Reading Time: 3 mins.
According to a 2024 survey of 800 workers, almost 74% of men and 66% of women “crave more meaningful bonds with work colleagues.” Holidays are a great opportunity for HR and office managers to help build those bonds—Valentine’s Day included! To give you a headstart, here are three fun Valentine’s Day activities for work that will help you bring your team together.
1. Coworker ‘Love Notes’
Get the positive vibes going on V-Day by asking employees to write notes of appreciation to their coworkers. This is a win-win for your team. Not only will they feel more connected to each other, they’ll also be more engaged with their work. (When workers get valuable feedback from their peers, they’re 57% less likely to burn out.)
Writing a nice note might feel intimidating, so consider sharing these fill-in-the-blank templates to help your team get started.
- I love working with ______ because ______!
- ______ made my day better recently when they ______.
- ______ is fantastic at ______. We’d be lost without them!
- ______ really embodies our company’s core value of ______. I noticed it when ______.
- ______ is a pro at ______. Their expertise really came in handy when ______.
- Thank you, ______, for stepping up and ______. You’re amazing!
- ______ always brings ______ to the team. We’re lucky to have them.
- I’m so grateful for ______’s help with ______. It made things so much easier!
- ______ inspires me with their ______. Keep it up!
- A huge thank-you to ______ for their teamwork on ______.
It’s up to you how your team delivers their notes. If you want to turn the idea into an event, a manager could collect the notes in an old-school Valentine’s Day shoebox and read them out loud in a company meeting. If publicly cheering each other on isn’t your style, you could invite employees to drop their notes off quietly at each other’s desks. For hybrid and remote teams, a simple solution like a shared Google Doc or virtual bulletin board can have a similar impact.
2. Red and Pink Fruit Smorgasbord
Help your team stick to their New Year’s resolutions and bring them together by filling your break room with a spread of heart-healthy red and pink fruit. It’s a fun and on-theme alternative to the usual V-Day candy. Consider fruits like apples, Cara Cara navel oranges (they’re pink inside!), ruby-red blood oranges, Rio Red grapefruits, and bright pink dragon fruits. Here at The FruitGuys, we deliver fresh fruit in bulk directly to offices and can help make the setup easy.
To maximize the potential for connection, you can invite your team to visit the smorgasbord at a set time. You could even play a quick round of Valentine’s Day trivia before they dig in. That may not seem like much, but as the Harvard Business Review reports, “Purposeful interactions—even brief ones—can interrupt the withdrawal spiral and reignite engagement.”
3. Snack n’ Scavenger Hunt
Of all of the fun Valentine’s Day activities for work that we included here, this might be the best for competitive teams. The night before V-Day, cut out paper hearts and hide them around the office. Then, start the day off with an email or company-wide announcement challenging employees to find them to win a prize. Invite everyone to meet up in the break room at day’s end for a snack and a celebration of the winners.
The celebration can include prizes big or small—whatever fits your budget. For the snack, look for something that fits the holiday theme but is a bit healthier than traditional V-Day treats. Think heart-shaped dark chocolates that you can pair with fresh fruit, or Sweetheart Pop strawberry-and-white chocolate popcorn from LesserEvil. Sweetheart Pop is certified organic, gluten-free, vegan, and kosher, and comes in cute bags perfect for Valentine’s Day. Plus, you can order it in bulk for your office from The FruitGuys through February 2025.
Hopefully, this short list of fun Valentine’s Day activities for work gave you some helpful ideas. If you try them, you just might get better engagement and a happier team as your V-Day treat.
