CEO Organizes A 7-Hour Virtual Beer Pong To Ease Edge Off Employees

By Yuki Noguchi

Published May 1, 2020 at 7:15 AM PDT

DJ Haddad, CEO of an advertising company in Fairfield, Conn., says virtual meetings and parties help his employees forge new connections with their co-workers.

DJ Haddad's virtual beer pong event for employees is the stuff of legend, drawing in 50 of his employees and lasting an epic seven hours.

Keeping up employee morale during a worldwide pandemic is a challenge, he says. Haddad is keenly aware of that as CEO of Haddad & Partners, an advertising company in Fairfield, Conn. "Everybody's on edge, like, 'Are our clients going to start slowing down or are they going to start pulling projects?' "

But Haddad says one side benefit of virtual meetings and parties for his advertising firm: forging new connections with people across teams and across time zones.

"We have people in Australia who've never worked with some of the people in Colorado just because they're on separate teams," he says.

Haddad, who has four kids, says working at home with them around makes him ache to get back into the relative quiet of an office. Many of his employees feel the same way, he says.

"We're all looking forward to meeting back up in person. We're going to have to throw a big party somewhere."