Christmas is coming… Pure HR’s guide to avoiding festive fiascos in the workplace

Tis the season to be jolly and in the run up to Christmas, we all like to let our hair down and enjoy the festivities. Unfortunately, sometimes, with spirits running high, things can go awry. We look at some the HR pitfalls you might come up against in the run up to Christmas, and what you can do to mitigate them – without being the Grinch!

The first thing to remember is that not everyone celebrates Christmas. An individual may mark a different religious or cultural occasion or may not celebrate any at all, for many different reasons. Does your company culture embrace the diversity within your workplace and allow people to choose what to participate in without judgement or expectation?

If you need support understanding the issues around equality and diversity and creating a culture of inclusion in your workplace, the Pure HR team can help.

Christmas Gifting

Christmas is the season of giving, but with the current cost of living crisis, but people’s festive budgets are likely to be reduced. Create a culture where these is no expectation on anyone to participate in gift giving, and no ill-will if people opt-out of any festive activity. If you do a Secret Santa, keep budgets low.

The Christmas Party

If you’re planning a Christmassy company get-together, there’s a few things you should consider. Making few wise decisions at the planning stage can help avoid issues.

• Unless you are planning to fully fund the event with all food, drinks and travel included, you’ll need to mindful of whether your employees can afford to attend, in the current financial climate. Choose a venue that is close to where people live and help organise shared transport so costs are reduced.
• Be sensitive to any employees for whom alcohol is a complete no-go, for example for religious reasons or if they have addiction problems. Consider choosing an event that doesn’t involve alcohol at all – there are plenty of fun alternative activities available.
• If booze is a must and you are putting money behind the bar, be responsible and consider how much ‘free drink’ you make available, so that you’re not fuelling drunken behaviour.
• Add a reminder to the party invite information that everyone is still representing the company whilst at the Christmas do. People tend to forget this, especially if the event is held off site. You do not want your company reputation undermined by mis-judged behaviour.
• Brief The Managers. Your management team deserve to relax and have fun too but remind them that they need to remain professional and lead by example – they need to accept the responsibilities that come with their position.

The Morning After…

Remember, anything that goes on at a work Christmas Party that breaks the company’s rules on behaviour, can be dealt with through official disciplinary or grievance procedures. It definitely isn’t a case of ‘what goes on at the party, stays at the party.’

Dealing with misconduct, in a prompt and official way, will help reenforce the message for future events, that inappropriate behaviour will not go unnoticed just because it’s party time.

And it’s not just the day after your own party you need to think about. With everyone spending more time with friends and families throughout the festive period, there are plenty of opportunities for them to over-indulge. Hopefully you’ll already have effective absence tracking in place, and now is no time to slack on this. If you notice that someone’s lateness or absence seems to correspond with an increase in seasonal socialising, it’s worth addressing it swiftly.

Keep Up Best Practice

It can be tempting to let it bad behaviour and poor attendance slide so as not to be a party pooper, but we strongly advise dealing with issues through your usual absence and performance management procedures, otherwise you could be opening yourself up to issues further down the line. Pure Human Resources can provide support with handling employee misconduct, disciplinary and grievance procedures, absence management and managing underperformance. We offer Pay As You Go services which are ideal for sorting out any ad-hoc employee management issues, as well Retained HR packages for on-going HR support.

• purehumanresources.co.uk