Collecting Christmas party photos without them ending up on LinkedIn
The fear is not abstract. It is that one photo of a colleague on his fourth glass, posted by a teammate who meant well. You head that off beforehand, not afterwards.
the short answer
Set up one private album, turn moderation on before the first guest scans, and name one person who approves on Saturday morning. Put two lines in the invitation about where the photos end up and who to talk to if you would rather not be in them. Together that is a quarter of an hour of work and it saves you the conversation on Monday.
When is the Christmas party, and when do you arrange this?
The Dutch Christmas party sits in a narrow window. Uniq Event writes that most companies plan theirs in the first three weeks of December and that you are better off avoiding the last working days before Christmas, because people are already off by then. A weekday afternoon or evening usually brings a higher turnout than the weekend.
The organising itself starts much earlier than people think. For a popular venue Uniq Event advises booking six to nine months ahead. Timeless Events puts the party as a whole at three to six months. Put briefly: if you start thinking about it in September you are late for the room and exactly on time for the rest.
The photo part belongs with the rest, not with December. You set it up in the same week you send the invitation, because those two lines about photos have to be in that invitation. Anyone who leaves it to the day itself never gets to the one step that really matters.
What exactly are people afraid of?
Ask somebody in HR and you rarely get a story about the GDPR. You get an image: a colleague hanging on the bar at a quarter past eleven with glassy eyes, and a teammate who puts that photo on LinkedIn the next morning with a line about what a good year it was. Nobody meant any harm. And still it is the only thing that colleague thinks about when he walks in on Monday.
What stands out is that the fear is almost never about strangers. It is about your own crowd, about whether somebody shows your worst twenty seconds of the year to two hundred business contacts. That is not a data breach, that is a social accident. Which is exactly why a stricter policy does not fix it: people do not read the policy and they do not mean it badly.
What does work is small and dull. There is one place the photos go, there is one person who looks at them before they become visible, and there are two lines in the invitation that say so. Then it is not a rule but an agreement, and people usually do keep an agreement.
How do you set it up? Four steps
- Turn moderation on before you share the linkThat is one switch, and it is the whole reason the rest works. Nothing joins the album before somebody has approved it. Do it before the first guest scans, because turning it on later does not work retroactively.
- Name one person who approvesNot the communications department but a name, and somebody who really does look on Saturday morning. With a hundred guests and an ordinary evening it takes about half an hour, with coffee. Make sure that person knows in advance what they can take out without checking with anyone.
- Put two lines in the invitationFor example: we are collecting the photos in one private album, they stay inside the company and do not go to social media. If you would rather not be in them, let Sanne know. A Christmas party needs no more legal preparation than that.
- Put the cards at the bar and the coat checkNot on the tables, because at a drinks party nobody sits at a table. The bar is where everybody passes and where people stand still for two minutes. At the coat check the latecomers pick one up after all.
Where do you put the photos?
| how | what it does well | where it goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| WhatsApp group | everybody is already in it and it costs nobody any effort | compressed files, and the whole group watches live while people are still uploading |
| Teams or SharePoint folder | stays inside your own environment and IT manages the access | outsiders struggle to get in, and nobody logs in with a glass in their hand |
| Private album with moderation | uploading takes one scan and nothing appears before you see it | you lose half an hour on Saturday morning approving |
SharePoint wins on a point that carries weight: you already have a data processing agreement for it, the photos never leave your own environment, and your procurement department has nothing to assess. In an organisation with a strict security policy that is often the shortest path. The price you pay for it is the turnout.
One QR code on the bar, and moderation on
Guests scan and upload without an app or an account, and you see everything before it becomes visible. The album carries your colours and logo, and storage is on European servers.
Does that approving not cost you your whole Saturday morning?
Less than you think, and it is manageable because most of the material is dull. From a party of a hundred guests where half join in, the bulk arrives as clusters of the same photo: the same table four times, the same selfie three times, a blurry shot of the DJ. You do not have to think about those. You scroll, you tap, and you pull two things out.
What you do pause on are the photos of one person in a pose they did not choose themselves. Those you leave out without holding a meeting about it. That is not censorship, it is the same courtesy as not repeating what somebody said at half past one. Exactly what you do if something slips through anyway is in the guide on removing photos that do not belong.
One thing is worth considering: the best uploads do not arrive on the night itself. They come on Sunday and Monday, when people go through their camera roll at home. So count on two rounds of approving instead of one, and keep the album open for at least a week.
And the GDPR, is there anything to arrange for that?
For a private album that only colleagues see it is manageable: inform your people in advance, make objecting easy, and agree how long the photos stay up. That is exactly the two lines from the invitation plus a date. It only gets more complicated once a photo goes outward, to the website or a careers page, because then you need consent that somebody can refuse without consequences.
The full explanation, with the sources from the Dutch DPA (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens) alongside, is in what you may do with photos of employees after the company party. That is also where you find how somebody withdraws their consent, and why you then have to clear out your own folders and not only the website.
What organisers ask us
Do colleagues have to install an app?
No. The QR code opens a web page in the browser that is already on their phone. No app store, no account, no password. That goes for outside guests too, so clients and suppliers who come along can simply join in.
Can we close the album afterwards?
Yes, and straight away. Taking it offline removes guest access immediately, and you can publish it again after that. Handy if you only get to a last clean-up round in January, or if something comes in while you are on the train.
What if somebody does not want to be in them at all?
Make sure they can say so in advance, and that it costs them nothing. The Dutch DPA names practical solutions such as a sticker or a lanyard that shows who does not want to be photographed. The alternative has to be equivalent to what everyone else gets.
How do we get people to actually upload?
Announcing it once at the start of the evening helps most, and one reminder on Monday comes close behind. More ways to get the turnout up are in how to get guests to actually upload.
Can we use our own logo and colours?
Yes. The guest page carries your colours and logo, and you print the QR cards yourself. For a drinks party that is more than a detail: people are quicker to scan something that clearly comes from their own organisation than something that looks like it comes from a service they have never heard of.
Can we download everything in one go afterwards?
Yes, as one zip, per album or the whole event, at full size exactly as it was uploaded. Do that before the active period ends. How long that period lasts depends on the plan, and that is explained in how long the photos stay up.
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Ready in a quarter of an hour, well before December
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