By Pooja Bajaj, Founder & CEO – ExtraMile
Every year, without fail, I feel it.
That shift in the air somewhere in late August or early September.
The dhol starting somewhere in the distance. The smell of modaks from the pantry downstairs. Colleagues who were heads-down in spreadsheets five minutes ago suddenly standing at the window, watching a procession go by.
Ganesh Chaturthi does something to people.
It carries a kind of energy that is difficult to manufacture and impossible to ignore. And over the years, I have come to believe that this is one of the most powerful, and most underused, employee engagement opportunities in the Indian corporate calendar.
Not because it is a public holiday.
Not because it gives HR a reason to put decorations up.
But because it is one of the few moments in the year when joy arrives uninvited, and the only thing you have to do is make space for it.
The question I hear from HR leaders most often around this time is not whether to celebrate. It is how to celebrate in a way that feels genuine, and that brings the team together rather than just filling a calendar slot.
So here are five ways we have seen Ganesh Chaturthi work beautifully at the workplace. Not just as a celebration, but as a real team-building moment.
Why Ganesh Chaturthi Is a Special Opportunity for Workplaces
Before the five ideas, a small but important thought.
Ganesh Chaturthi is celebrated most intensely in Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana. But it is observed, with varying degrees of tradition, across much of India.
If your team is pan-India, this is actually a gift. It gives you a chance to create an experience that is rooted in a real Indian tradition, without being exclusionary. When done with care and curiosity, a Ganesh Chaturthi celebration at the workplace can make employees from every region feel seen, because the spirit of Ganpati Bappa is one that transcends geography.
Ganesh, after all, is the remover of obstacles. In a workplace context, that is a rather fitting metaphor.
Let us get into it.
1. The Ganpati Bappa Welcome, A Ceremony That Sets the Tone
The arrival of Ganpati is the centrepiece of the festival. It is a moment of welcome, of reverence, and of collective joy.
In your workplace, this does not need to be a grand production. What it needs is intention.
Set up a small, beautiful Ganpati installation at a common area, the reception, the pantry, or the main floor. Keep it tasteful. Keep it inclusive. And then bring the team together for a short, warm welcome ritual, a brief aarti, a moment of gratitude, a few words from someone on the team about what the festival means to them.
Here is the part that makes it special: invite employees to be part of the setup. Let different team members take ownership, the decoration, the flowers, the modaks, the music. When people build something together, they feel differently about it.
The ceremony does not have to be long. Ten minutes, done with genuine care, does more than a one-hour mandatory program.
For hybrid teams: Live-stream the welcome moment and keep the video call open. Encourage remote employees to set up their own small Ganpati at home and join from there. The visual of a screen full of different home altars, each one personal and different, is quietly beautiful.
2. The Modak Challenge, Cooking as Team Building
This one never fails.
Modaks, the sweet dumplings that are Ganpati’s favourite offering, are notoriously difficult to make. The pleating alone has defeated many a confident home cook.
Run a modak-making challenge across teams.
Give each team the same ingredients. Set a timer. And watch what happens.
What happens is: colleagues who have never had a real conversation outside of a meeting are suddenly huddle together, arguing cheerfully over the shape of a pleat, laughing at a modak that turned into something unidentifiable, tasting each other’s work with completely unselfconscious joy.
Food does something that formal team activities cannot always replicate. It disarms people. It makes them human with each other.
The best part? At the end of the challenge, everyone eats together. And the worst modak on the table almost always gets the loudest applause.
Variation for remote teams: Send a modak-making kit to remote employees’ homes beforehand. Run the challenge simultaneously on video. Have everyone hold up their final creation at the same time. The chaos and laughter translate perfectly to a screen.
3. The Rangoli & Decoration Contest, Creativity Across Teams
Ganesh Chaturthi is one of the most visually vibrant festivals in India. The colours, the flowers, the rangoli, the lights, it is a feast for the senses.
Channel that creative energy into a team decoration contest.
Assign different areas of the office to different teams, a desk cluster, a floor, a corridor, a meeting room entrance. Give them a small budget, a timeframe, and complete creative freedom.
The results are always surprising.
Teams that thought of themselves as “not creative” find an unexpected flair. Someone pulls out a hidden talent for flower arrangement. A manager who is usually reserved turns out to have strong opinions about colour palettes.
Two categories worth adding:
- Most Traditional, for teams who honour the classical aesthetics of the festival
- Most Innovative, for teams who put a modern, unexpected spin on the theme
Keep the decorations up for the duration of the festival. The office looks and feels different for days. And that visual transformation is itself a kind of engagement, it says, we took time to make this beautiful, together.
4. The “Obstacles We Are Removing” Wall, A Ritual With Meaning
Ganesh is the remover of obstacles. That is one of the most beloved of his many identities.
Here is a simple workplace ritual built around that idea.
Ask every employee to write, on a small card, anonymously if they prefer, one obstacle they want to remove from the way they work together as a team. It could be a communication pattern. A process that slows everyone down. A meeting that no one finds useful. A habit that erodes trust.
Collect the cards. Read some aloud during a team gathering. Then, and this is the part that matters, do something with them.
Pick two or three obstacles the team collectively identifies as the most important. Assign ownership. Commit to addressing them by the end of the festive season.
This activity takes fifteen minutes. But it turns Ganesh Chaturthi from a celebration into a cultural moment, a moment where the team decides, together, to do something better.
That kind of engagement sticks.
5. Idol making session / competition – Which can be done online or virtually
Bring the spirit of Ganesh Chaturthi alive, no matter where your team sits.
In this hands-on activity, employees craft their own eco-friendly Ganesha idol using air-dry clay, paper pulp, or natural materials, guided by a live artist facilitator online or in person.
Teams can compete for categories like Most Creative, Most Eco-Friendly, and Best Storytelling, sharing the meaning behind their creation.
Virtual participants join via video call, making it fully hybrid-ready. Beyond the craft, it sparks conversation, slows the day down beautifully, and leaves every participant with something handmade and meaningful on their desk.
The Bigger Picture
I have been running employee engagement programs for years now. And I keep coming back to the same belief.
The best engagement is not manufactured.
It is borrowed from what already exists, the rhythms of the year, the festivals that people carry in their memories, the collective moments that India has always known how to create.
Ganesh Chaturthi is one of those moments.
Your job as an HR leader is not to create energy from scratch. It is to make space for the energy that is already there.
If you want help designing a Ganesh Chaturthi celebration that works for your team, whether you are 50 people in one office or 5,000 people across ten cities, let us talk.
At ExtraMile, we design employee engagement experiences built around the moments that already matter to Indian teams. This is one of our favourites.
Ganpati Bappa Morya. 🙏
ExtraMile is India’s leading employee engagement company. We help organisations across India create celebrations that build genuine team connection, one festival at a time. Book a free demo and let us plan your Ganesh Chaturthi celebration together.