20 Ways to Tell Your Employees That You Care. The holiday season brings the possibility of great joy for employees – and the opportunity to do great things for your business at the same time. The actions you take to foster excited, engaged employees always bring pay back to your organization. (What goes around, comes around.)

These twenty tips will make the holiday season joyful for employees who in turn use their engagement and motivation to do great things for your customers.

Holiday Celebration Ideas

Offer employees alternatives or additions to an expensive office party with dinner, drinks and dancing. Your employee activity committee – you do have an employee activity or morale committee? – can plan engagement building events.

• Consider an ugly holiday sweater day on which employees wear gaudy, delightful holiday sweaters and pose for group pictures.
• A cookie day brightens everyone’s holidays. Interested employees bring plates of cookies and everyone gets to sample and ooh and ah. (The company buys some, too.) And, you can even sponsor a cookie swap in which employees trade plates of cookies to have a variety at home.
• Provide a holiday lunch that highlights holiday foods such as turkey, stuffing, and Christmas cookies.
• A Secret Santa swap brings inexpensive presents to delight participating employees.

Establish Holiday Traditions in the Office

Establish traditions in the office for the holidays.

Employees look forward to traditions and talking about workplace traditions is storytelling that builds your cultureand reputation as an employer of choice.

• Make up an annual special employee-featured holiday card to send to clients, customers, and business partners.
• Treat employees to an annual Christmas Eve luncheon, at a location that features games and things to do for families, and shut the office down at noon, so that everyone can attend the event.

• Hold a holiday luncheon onsite to promote team building and interdepartmental cooperation and understanding. Use ice breakers such as assigned groups via numbers on the bottom of plates to ensure that cross-functional interaction occurs.

Honor Diversity for the Holidays

Finally remember that not every employee exchanges Christmas cards for the holidays. The days that are celebrated by diverse employees are many in December and January. You want to honor and celebrate employee diversity.

• While relevant take care not to schedule important celebrations to conflict with the holidays of various religions or nationalities.
• Serve food at events that allow any employee, with any beliefs, to participate. Always provide a vegetarian option.
• While it’s okay to say, “Merry Christmas,” keep most office celebrations secular to honor diverse beliefs. Look for ways to note the celebration days of religions other than Catholicism and Christianity. You can extend a card, a gift or a thank you note to honor diverse employee celebrations, remembrances, and religious events.