Have you noticed that resignations spike before or after the Christmas break in your organisation? The end of the year is a time to reflect, especially if it has been a particularly challenging year like this one.
Even though many organisations know about the 'Christmas disconnection', very few do anything proactive about it. So here are our top 3 ideas for you to act on this year:
1. Encourage managers to meet with their team to discuss the outlook for next year and the employee's valuable contribution in the future. Have the managers personally wish everyone a nice break and have something to look forward to in the New Year like.......
2. Have a new year BBQ! Organise a team lunch or activity that people know about before the Christmas break. Make coming back to work a celebration and use the opportunity to re-engage the team.
3. Don't leave any issues unresolved over the break. If the employee has any role issues or HR applications outstanding, have them addressed ASAP. Anything that isn't dealt with could fester over the break.
What have you done to make sure Christmas isn't a disconnection event in your organisation? Looking forward to your stories!
4 comments:
Our industry involves employees being away from their families for weeks at a time and sometimes over Christmas. We started sending the families a Christmas present each year which was well received. Last year we sent all the kids in a family a movie ticket and their partners an ipod.
Anonymous, that's great!
We worked in a similar industry and in research interviews we completed last year, the employees voiced loud concerns about their kids not having their mum/dad with them at Christmas.
Of course, it is hard to be away from family at Christmas but your gesture would have let the families know that you acknowledge them.
Nicola
We have a compulsory close down period every year and on the first day back we have an 'afternoon at the pub' so that people can catch up on what they did over the break, etc. We found that it really helped the office spirit when people returned to work and staff have already asked me if we're doing it next year.
My company, a big MNC decided to tell people that they didn't have jobs at 5.30 pm on the day of the Xmas party; I don't know what they were thinking, but they seemed a bit surprised that those people didn't feel like attending the Xmas party!
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