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What issues do you anticipate with morale around the holidays?
Companies are scaling back their holiday party plans or cancelling them altogether. Some companies are requiring employees to take unpaid leave between Christmas and New Year’s. And end-of-the-year bonuses are likely a thing of the past across the board. Employees are shouldering a lot of stress outside the workplace as well, so how are you helping them handle the fact that Scrooge has come onboard?
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5 Answers
It is funny you should ask this . . . we just addressed this today. We have decided to have a small get-together (employees and significant others) at my home as I am the Managing Attorney). We will be serving dinner and egg nog, etc. After that, we are all planning to go to a local college presentation of the "Nutcracker" (reasonable ticket prices). Thought that this is a nice cheery way to reduce some of the holiday stress.
This holiday season we have decided to divide the holiday budget amongst the employee’s bonus checks. I felt by doing this, would make our employees christmas just a little better. After informing our staff about this action, they were very happy and pleased with our decision.
My clients arew either having a party after letting staff go (which seems to me to be madness) or have cancelled the party.
I suggest having a "This year we're in this together drink". At the end of day and in the office with lower costs and not adding insult to those who are left after cut backs.
As an advisor on cultural issues, my suggestion is to find another time and place to skimp. Managers always say their people are their greatest asset, yet when real opportunities arise to recognize and reward their people for sticking with them and performing well in hard times (such as the Holidays), management short-sightedly cuts back on its highest profile opportunity to express its gratitude. Come on, execs. Surely you can find the means to get your people together in a modest celebration of what they've done and what they will achieve. What a great opportunity to convey a sincere message of thanks, a reassurance that their prosperity and well-being are important and secure and to be the heroe that, sometime in the future, they can refer to when reflecting on tougher times.
There are other means of saying thank you than money. Why not have some fun without spending a fortune?
Let employees decorate their work area in the Christmas them if possible. Have a fancy dress day in the run up and give small prizes for the best participants. Ask managers to participate in a "reward your staff" day, where they fetch drinks for their team all day, give a couple of hours off, that sort of thing.
While I sympathise with Stuart's position, I think he's wrong, particularly if you've just let people go, a party paid for by the company would seem absolutely outrageous in those circumstances.
But a round of drinks paid for at the start of an informal get together by senior managers? That wouldn't go amiss...
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