GreatWork Blog

Building better workplaces through compliance, culture, connection

The holiday season is a time of joy, celebration, and togetherness. As offices across the globe prepare for festive decorations and year-end parties, it's essential to recognize and embrace the diversity that exists within the workforce. This season provides a unique opportunity for fostering inclusion, understanding, and a sense of belonging among employees of various cultural backgrounds, traditions, and beliefs.

Have you ever planned a meeting, a retreat, or all-staff event only to learn later that it was a special religious or cultural holiday?  To be a more inclusive organization it’s helpful to be mindful of those special days and cultural events that some of your employees might be observing. 

Since each person in your workplace will celebrate holidays differently, recognizing and supporting an inclusive environment shows your team cares about everyone! In other words, "holiday" is not synonymous with "Christmas."

Happy Holidays! What does this mean for the workplace? For some, it means stress, but work shouldn’t be adding to it. A few things to think about during the holiday season, including holiday parties, gift giving and time-off requests. 

There are many ways to brighten up the workday, but holidays provide the perfect occasion to engage employees and show them work can be fun, too! Halloween offers more than one way to inspire your employees to be creative and gives you the chance to frighten some holiday spirit into them.

So much to do . . . so little time. Between holiday baking, canned food drives, Secret Santa gifts, school holiday programs, gift-giving, family parties, friend parties, recovering from all the parties . . . what is a person to do?

A solar eclipse occurs when the moon blocks any part of the sun. On Monday, August 21, 2017, a solar eclipse will be visible (weather permitting) across all of North America. The whole continent will experience a partial eclipse lasting 2 to 3 hours. Halfway through the event, anyone within a roughly 70-mile-wide path from Oregon to South Carolina will experience a brief total eclipse, when the moon completely blocks the sun’s bright face for up to 2 minutes 40 seconds, turning day into night.

It’s the holiday party season and of course you want people to have fun and enjoy themselves. But you also want to make sure the fun is appropriate and safe.

The last two weeks of the year don’t have to be the slowest time of the year, according to Mary Pender Greene, a New York City psychotherapist, relationship expert and career coach. “It is unfortunate that some people might put their personal lives and problems ahead of their business concerns, ” 

You know how much employees enjoy holidays off … especially when they get paid for them. So, to help you determine if your holiday practices are competitive, Cascade Employers Association just conducted a Holiday Practices Survey to provide you with valuable insights regarding the remaining 2013 and all 2014 holiday practices for employers in Oregon and Southwest Washington.

The last two weeks of the year don’t have to be the slowest time of the year, according to Mary Pender Greene, a New York City psychotherapist, relationship expert and career coach. “It is unfortunate that some people might put their personal lives and problems ahead of their business concerns, ” said Pender Greene. “When you factor in the tremendous pressures and stresses that come with the holidays, it is surprising any business gets done at all. But that doesn’t have to be the case.”