Rule #1 – Don’t Get Drunk at the Holiday Party
Rule #2 – Don’t Get Drunk at the Holiday Party
Just continue replaying the rules over and over again and you’re halfway there.
For HR, the holiday season can bring a huge variety of reports, emotions, tasks, and more. As the HRNewbie in the office, it is your job to figure out what that role means for your career, but it’s more important that your employees understand what this role means to them, as their support.
Support Struggling Employees
While the holiday season is a wonderful time for a large number of our employees, for some, the holidays represent a part of their lives where everything wasn’t wonderful. We’re generally not licensed counsellors, but we still have the responsibility of being a listening ear for those employees who may have lost a loved one, are in a financial struggle for the holidays, have bad family memories, or just feeling lonely. Whatever the problem may be, their emotional being is just as important as that of employees who are celebrating.
Being an introvert during the holiday season brings out more stress for people. Coworkers want to talk about their holiday plans, family traditions, and end of year parties. Don’t force your employees to be apart of these conversations, but don’t allow them to rude – and this also goes for you. It’s still the end of the year and a lot of projects needs to be finished and some even still need to be started, but it is still your responsibility to get out and have conversations with your employees. If you don’t know what’s going on, you won’t know what role you can play in helping them achieve their end of year goals.
Plan A Good Party
In my experience, HR is the department that gets the holiday party together. We plan, we budget, we send out the invitations, we decorate – we are the holiday party. It is important that in the rush of getting it done, we don’t forget to take moments to ourselves and enjoy. The arrangements will go off flawlessly, no one will say anything offensive, Bob and Jerry from the mail room won’t get into a fight, and no one will try to cop a feel on the coworker they’ve had a crush on the entire year. Trust me.
But don’t limit your work partying to your workplace.
Participate in your local SHRM end of the year chapter party. Making the connections that will help you and the company thrive into the upcoming year. Continue the rules given at the very beginning of this post, but always have fun. Use the opportunity to get ideas on activities for your company’s end of the year holiday party. You don’t want to go to a boring SHRM party (and it won’t be boring), so don’t force your employees to come to an end of year party that won’t keep them entertained. Showing appreciation is a great way to bring in the new year, it’s even better if the company or organization can keep the same energy throughout the year.
Surviving the holiday season as an HRNewbie can be overwhelming. It’s a big learning curve to take in what your company has been doing for the team over the past few years, how you now fit in, and what value can you bring to the table. But you can do it and have a happy holiday, too.
Originally published on Workology blog.
Jazmine Wilkes is an HR Assistant learning the ways of everything HR, including blogging and serving on her local SHRM Chapter Board in Alabama. Jazmine describes herself as an “HR Millennial Trying to Get It Right”. She can be reached on: Facebook at HRJazzy , Twitter @HRJazzy or the HRJazzy blog at HRJazzy Blog.
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