5 (Work Appropriate) Ways to Celebrate Valentine's Virtually

Although Valentine’s Day is usually celebrated with chocolate and flowers, it’s also the perfect opportunity to show appreciation for your colleagues in the workplace. Yet, with many employees still working remotely, it may seem challenging to find ways to connect and enjoy each other’s company this year.

To give you some ideas, here are 5 work appropriate ways to recognize your coworkers virtually this Valentine’s Day:

1. Create a Virtual Game or Contest

“We play a game we call, ‘Guess What's in the Box’ with our 600+ remote employees. We will be sending our employees small surprise packages with fun souvenirs inside. Before opening it, they will have to guess what's inside, and then they will have to unbox it on video. The winners will be announced at our Valentine's virtual gathering and will receive Amazon gift cards.” — Teo Vanyo, CEO & Founder at Stealth Agents

“To celebrate Valentine's Day virtually, my company is hosting a virtual costume contest where the best impression of cupid wins! We're doing the contest over Zoom so a lot of us are planning to play around with the custom background feature. After the costume contest, we are doing a virtual happy hour where we'll be doing a 'Cupid gift exchange' (similar to a Secret Santa).” — Tyler Forte, CEO at Felix Homes

*We are doing virtual Rom-Com trivia over Zoom. Between now and Valentine's Day every employee is required to watch the movie How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, which was based on a company vote. Then on the Friday before Valentine's Day (because it falls on a weekend), we are taking the last two hours of the work day to do a trivia party. We're going to split the employees into teams, give them a special Slack thread to chat amongst themselves, and then I'm going to ask a bunch of detailed questions about the movie. The team with the most points will each win $100 Starbucks gift cards. And no matter which team wins, I am also shipping each employee a box of See's chocolates for the special day.” — John Ross, CEO of Test Prep Insight

2. Host a Virtual Valentine’s Gathering

“Our company will have a virtual wine night to celebrate Valentine’s Day this year. Everyone will dress up and use the same virtual background to make it look like we’re together while celebrating in the comfort of our homes.” — Valentina Lopez, Co-Founder of Happiness Without

“We will celebrate it virtually over video calls. We are planning to gather employees over a virtual call for an hour or so and share some personal stories about their Valentine Days from college, etc. The whole idea is to get people to know each other well and increase the bonding within the team. This will be followed by cake cutting and a round of drinks.” — Karthik Subramanian, Senior Content Manager at Picmaker

“We are doing a virtual cooking class together. We have each created a recipe for a different course of the meal and will take turns teaching while the others cook along. It is a great way to come together. I'm contributing to the main meat course (a locally hunted pheasant), and as the resident knife geek, I will be giving a carving lesson for any of our non-chef colleagues.” — Brian Casey, Founder/Owner of Knifegeeky

3. Send Them a Note or Goodie Bag

“We are choosing three people who we are grateful for and sending a detailed paragraph about why we are so grateful to work with them as a colleague. We are then compiling everyone's writings and producing a mini PDF.” — Steve Kantor, President at Lifebushido

“We'll be sending out Valentine’s cards and chocolates to let our crew know how much we love and appreciate them. We want to take every opportunity at the moment to stay as connected as possible to our team when we can’t see them in person and miss them!” — Jim Carr, Shakespeare Sisters Press

“We’re encouraging our remote workforce to dress to theme this Valentine’s Day, with pink-and-red outfits and heart-shaped accessories. We even mailed a goodie bag to all of our staffers with heart-shaped headbands to encourage them to bring some of the holiday spirit into their Zoom meetings. We also included Valentine’s snacks like chocolates and baked goods in their goodie bags, and we’ll be encouraging our employees to eat Valentine’s lunch together on a large group Zoom call to help the holiday feel as normal as possible.” — Shaun Price, Head of Customer Acquisition at MitoQ

4. Cultivate Laughter

“I believe the best way to increase team collaboration is by sharing laughter. So, instead of sending love notes, we decided to share laughter this Valentine's Day through the 20th Century’s most powerful tool—memes. Our creative minds have created a folder with Valentine's Day memes, so everyone can choose their meme and keep them as profile images for the whole day.” — Dan Edmonson, Founder & CEO of Dronegenuity

5. Donate to a Shared Cause

“What has worked well for us is to make every holiday a chance to reinforce our goal as an organization to help animals in need. Instead of gifts, we donate to our local animal shelters, and we will do the same for Valentine's Day, giving monetary donations in the name of our pets who we love dearly. It is impractical to mail chocolates or cards to our colleagues, so we put those funds towards animal welfare causes and in our pet's names for a bit of fun.” — John Cho, Founder of My Pet Child

Looking for more ways to keep employees connected and engaged? Check out our latest eBook, HR's Guide to Boosting Employee Morale in 2022.