There are a wide variety of ways that festive cheer can be spread across a business. Efforts should be focused at an individual and team level, as well as at a business-wide level and externally to the business.
Of course you should still expect colleagues to work hard, but I recommend supplying them with different ways to have fun. In the past, we have hosted typical all-staff Christmas parties. More recently, we encouraged everyone to give something back by taking part in the popular charity Christmas jumper day phenomenon.
Having certain facilities on site allows us to be more creative, putting on events that may not be feasible for every business. With two restaurants, we have the ability to serve everybody Christmas lunch, with the directors taking on the role of serving our employees for the day.
We also have a bar, which allows for a festive quiz evening, or for people to start celebrating at HQ before they head out for their Christmas team nights out. From first-hand experience, I would encourage organisations to be inventive with the space and resources available to them.
Christmas conveniently takes place around half way through our financial year, giving us an excellent chance to celebrate success with our annual bonus schemes, typically paid in December. We host our annual awards events, ‘The Tony’s,’ in honour of our managing director, Tony Killeen. To top it off, for the last three years we have given everyone 12 bottles of wine from our sister company, Rude Wines.
With the annual Christmas kids’ party, a special treat for all of our colleagues’ youngsters, and desks decorated within an inch of their lives, Christmas certainly gets the full treatment at Allpay. Add in secret Santa and we probably have the clean sweep of Christmas activities.
Steve Foulger is HR director at payment service provider Allpay