5 tips to spread holiday cheer in the workplace

With the holiday season just around the corner, managing employees effectively is necessary to prevent the negative elements that this time of year can bring. The pressure of managing both professional and personal commitments and completing all their tasks before their time-off period can be extremely stressful for your employees. Their productivity may also decrease due to burnout and lack of motivation. That's why it's crucial to build a supportive work atmosphere that boosts employee morale and keeps them motivated. Here are the top five tips to spread holiday cheer in the workplace:

1. Conduct a workplace holiday party

A full-on, fun office party can do an amazing job of keeping employees happy. As a first step, decorate your workplace and cubicles with holiday decor, such as a beautiful Christmas tree, candy canes, snowflakes, wreaths, and string lights. You can also host activities like Secret Santa, an ugly sweater contest, or a treasure hunt spread out over a week to build excitement around the party. You might even have a holiday-themed photo booth with fun props and encourage your team to take pictures with them. On the day of the party, you could have a dinner party with good food and music, after which you can distribute gifts to your employees.

2. Be very generous with time off

During the holiday season, it's essential to be flexible with time off requests so that your employees can have a better work-life balance and manage their holiday stress. You can encourage your employees to plan their time off schedules in advance so that they don't clash and disrupt work. Inform managers to approve time off generously as long as there are no major work disruptions. You could also consider offering floating holidays and unlimited time off around the holiday season. As a rule of thumb, it's good to adopt flexible schedules like flextime, compressed work weeks, remote work, and hybrid work during the holidays to ensure that employees can complete their personal responsibilities without having to compromise on their work.

3. Organize wellness programs

Your employees require a much-deserved break after working so hard throughout the year. Wellness workshops on varied topics including stress management, time management, work-life balance, physical fitness, and sleep hygiene could be really useful during this time. Similarly, you could bring your employees together for a guided meditation a few times a week until the holiday season is over. This could help them feel really refreshed and active.

Also read: Creating the right employee wellness program for your organization

4. Uphold gratitude and appreciation

Your sincere gratitude and recognition for their hard work and dedication will help your employees feel more motivated toward the end of the year. You can consider offering a holiday bonus as a sign of thanks to alleviate the financial stress often associated with the holiday season. Otherwise, you can adopt other appreciation activities, wherein managers can write personalized thank-you notes for each of their team members, reflecting on every achievement of theirs and how they've been a significant part of your company's growth. You can also consider taking your employee appreciation posts to social media and making them public, as its a wonderful way to show that you genuinely care for and appreciate your employees.

Also read:8 simple ways to show employee appreciation

5. Be kind to each other

What better way to spread holiday cheer than encouraging your employees to be kind to each other? For instance, whenever a team member is struggling to complete their tasks because of the holiday pressure and time-off clashes, one of their colleagues could pitch in to help them. Similarly, managers can consider canceling meetings that are not of very high priority and postpone them until after the holiday season. Further, if some team members are spending their holidays alone and are feeling lonely, their team could offer to spend an evening with them. All of these things will truly bring your team together and help them keep stress at bay. But, for all of these acts to happen organically, C-level leaders and managers should lead by example.

Spreading holiday cheer at work

This holiday season, show your employees you truly care for them and keep them motivated. We hope this blog post gave you an idea of different things you could do to make your employees feel special during the holiday season and beyond!

Also read:10 activities to boost employee motivation during the holidays