We put a lot of energy into discussing and researching our birthday person's interests, hobbies, and wishes. This could mean going through a person’s Pinterest board, looking at what they’re liking on Instagram, or trying to remember little hints they left us.

But sometimes, there are hard nuts to crack and we need to get a little more creative. All I’m going to say is we’re known for sliding in our teammates significant other’s DMs.

There are few months when it gets really intense. You can feel the drama in the air, and our Slack birthday channels become a frantic mess. But we manage to deliver. Only sometimes on time, but hey, at least we try.

Usually, we gather in the office and coordinate everything while the birthday person is on their lunch break/meeting/not looking.

We hide gifts around the office, organize treasure hunts or awkward random meetings in conference rooms to have the giveaway event.

Because of COVID-19, we’re primarily working remotely, so we moved some of our celebrations online.

We wanted to keep the surprise element and have an event where we all gather together to celebrate and have a laugh.

Often, we organize (fake) remote meetings where we all join at once. It’s just the right amount of awkwardness you need during the workweek. Sometimes we ship the gifts by delivery services; sometimes, we hand it over ourselves.

We also started to make digital gift cards.

Figma turned out to be a fantastic tool for this! Whether you want animated cards, Sims-like interactive treasure hunts or auto-layout puzzles — the possibilities are infinite.

We may be far away, but there’s always a way to bring nice atmosphere to the team ☀