Holidays are a hectic time of year for any company. Many people get swept up in the holiday season and mentally check out of their day-to-day obligations well before they go on their annual leave.
However, employers also often forget that it is up to them to think of ways to keep employees happy and productive during this time.
To decrease holiday-driven brain fog and keep employee engagement high, managers should reaffirm their workers’ successes and motivate them to complete their tasks in a timely and efficient manner.
Read on for our actionable tips on how to maintain employee engagement during the holiday season.
Set Clear Goals On Time
Setting clear and manageable goals for your team on time is the first step to keeping them motivated during the holiday season. Without clear goals, it is increasingly easy to lose sight of important projects or duties when waiting for the end of December to roll around.
By creating a list of major tasks your employees need to complete several weeks ahead of the holiday season, and then properly assigning those tasks, you avoid introducing these tasks at the height of the holiday craze.
Assigning tasks in a timely manner encourages everyone to continue working on their individual deliverables. Your team will finish the big tasks they’ve been working on by referring back to the list you created before the holidays were on everyone’s minds.
Encourage Performance Evaluations
The numbers speak for themselves: 43% of highly engaged employees receive feedback on a weekly basis.
This frequency of feedback may not be doable during the most hectic time of the year, i.e. a time when everybody is busy wrapping up year-end tasks and finances. However, you should still consider performing individual performance evaluations before the entire team checks out for the holidays.
It is great to have a dependable performance management system in place all year round, one that provides continuous tracking and performance analysis. Nevertheless, if ongoing performance evaluations are off the table for your particular team, you can still ensure that everybody gets their managers’ full attention during a scheduled time before the holidays.
Productivity and engagement rise when employees have a clear understanding of how their performance compares to expectations. Strong, honest, and measurable feedback helps them set new goals and deliverables for the new year. This goal-setting process often gets placed on the backburner when people return from their holidays to a full inbox.
Give Enough Time Off
The holidays are mainly about traveling, visiting relatives, attending parties, and unwinding after a demanding year of work. You should strongly urge staff members to take time off throughout this season to rest and spend time with their family and loved ones.
Indeed, for both employees and supervisors, it is crucial to go offline and stay disconnected while away from the workplace. Creating and enforcing time-off policies (which include inclusive holiday policies for different religious events) demonstrates your concern for healthy limits and work-life balance.
Make sure your staff has the freedom to schedule vacations well in advance so there is always something to look forward to. This approach ensures they are more likely to return to work rested, recharged, and prepared to concentrate on their jobs.
In addition to the above steps, ensure that everyone has the flexibility to meet demands related to important family events. This approach involves being understanding if someone has to leave work early to attend a holiday performance at their child’s school. After all, families support businesses all year round — the least managers can do is be accommodating around the holidays.
Host a Holiday Party
Employee morale can undoubtedly be impacted by working longer hours, particularly when the sun sets sooner and the temperature decreases. That is why one of the best employee engagement ideas during the holidays is to host a festive party for the entire team.
Consider your yearly holiday party a vital opportunity to encourage staff to persevere despite the chaotic holiday season. It’s also the ideal time to thank them for their contributions to your business over the previous year.
Hosting some kind of celebration later in the month not only offers something tangible to strive for and look forward to, but also delays the onset of holiday-induced distraction since so many employees start to lose concentration by mid-December.
Incorporate Holiday Bonuses
Despite understandable distractions, many employees manage to display exceptional performance throughout the holiday season. Although it would appear that these workers are the ones you never need to worry about, the very real danger of burnout is still present.
The last thing you want is for your top employees to find themselves losing sleep and skipping self-care in an effort to make up for team members who are away for the holidays. Make it a point to introduce holiday rewards and bonuses to those who exhibit exceptional levels of tenacity during the challenging winter months.
Rewards can include additional days off that they can use whenever they’d like next year; however, many would appreciate a one-time salary increase as there are many additional expenses this time of the year.
Incorporate special one-off bonuses into your employee engagement strategy for the holidays, and you will see productivity and motivation increase across the board.
Celebrate Your Team’s Wins
With so many things to complete during the festive season, it’s easy to forget the accomplishments and successes your team brought to the table throughout the year. However, nothing motivates people to deliver great results like acknowledgment of their hard work.
Thank-you notes, individual phone calls, and emails congratulating employees on a job well done are all pleasant and straightforward appreciation techniques that have a high return on investment. If you have a geographically dispersed or international team, calling them up to say thank you (even if you’d need a on-demand remote interpreting) can do wonders in boosting their productivity and motivation levels around the holidays.
For achievements that are particularly significant or noteworthy, you may even treat the entire team to a special team dinner or drinks. For some extra team building and an on-theme approach, consider taking the whole group to see a holiday movie!
Nina Petrov
Latest posts by Nina Petrov (see all)
- Employee Engagement Tips for the Holiday Season - December 28, 2022
