Holiday Hints for Team Leaders

Give out small gifts or gift cards. Hang cards or small gifts on a tree and draw numbers to see which employee gets to choose first, second, etc. Check into laws about how much can be given in gifts/gift cards before it becomes taxable income to an employee.

Work on a community project together. Volunteer projects abound as well as opportunities to collect items for food banks and non profit agencies. Encourage your team to get involved.

Consider shutting the office down early or allowing team members to take a half day with pay sometime in December to run errands/do shopping.

If you can afford it, treat your team to a really nice restaurant and include spouses/guests. Then again, simple celebrations are nice too. Maybe the boss can have everyone over to his house. Or you can bring in breakfast.

Do some fun icebreakers at staff meetings. Keep the mood light throughout the month of December.

Beware of timing: the holidays is NOT the time to make major announcements like layoffs, etc, although unfortunately that hasn't stopped companies from doing so. If you must deliver bad news, do all you can to handle it graciously and with as much reasonable lead time as possible (it can serve your team members to know they may need to hold off on holiday spending if layoffs are looming.) If at all possible, try to run your business so these types of things don't have to happen during holidays.

Be careful of precedents. While large Christmas bonuses are wonderful, if it happens every year, your employees may come to expect that and be really disappointed when they can't get one. Instead, consider year round profit sharing options that spread the benefit into their regular paychecks, or do surprise bonuses at various times, with a kind but reasonable gift at Christmas.