It’s holiday season and we’re sure everyone in the office is distracted and more chatty than usual. While it’s always good to loosen up a bit, it shouldn’t be at the expense of your work. Whether it’s fostering an engaging environment for your employees and picking up hacks to complete work on time, we want to help you boost employee productivity during this cheerful time of the year.

Use these 10 tips to create a productive environment for your employees, despite the holiday season distracting them.

🎄10 Ways to Boost Employee Productivity During Holiday Season 🎄

1. Take stock of your workload

End-of-the-year jitters don’t mean you need to slack off at work. Start the month by taking some time to list all your tasks and order them by priority. It’s one of the best productivity hacks!

Ask departments to cut any low-value tasks or projects that don’t have an immediate deadline from their list. By having a to-do list to refer to, employees can spend less time in planning out their work and more time getting it done. The to-do list will also help them avoid missing out on completing their most important tasks.

2. Finish your tasks before the holiday season begins 

You can’t help the festive season affect your attention but that doesn’t mean you should let it affect your work!

A great way to boost employee productivity is by setting early deadlines on tasks so that they are completed beforehand and so that employees only have smaller tasks on their plate when the holiday season hits.

Suggest this idea to each department and ask them to close their work before 20 December. You can use the extra time to plan future projects, brainstorm innovative ideas, and give your employees a much-needed breather.

3. Use this time for planning

If everyone is too distracted to sit down and get some heavy workload out of the way, use this time to plan ahead. Boost employee productivity by changing the pace with a good old brainstorming session.

Each department can use this planning time to plan out necessary tasks to pursue in the future, campaigns they need to work on, and projects that will be started. Finish planning so that you can start the next month without needing to sit down on figuring out the nitty-gritty. Instead, you can start the New Year by jumping straight into the work.

Use a timesheet calculator like AttendanceBot, for instance.

4. Encourage time off 

This cheerful season is a time when employees would be spending time with family. As the HR, encourage your employees to take a few days off to rest and get some quality time with their loved ones. Some companies have mandatory holidays around Christmas and New Year’s Day to let employees relax and employees tend to use their fixed leave days during this time too.

Valuing your employees’ personal life shows them that you care about their wellbeing and they are sure to be more invested in contributing to the business and its growth. Usher in the New Year with higher employee productivity!

Again, a timesheet calculator and employee scheduling software can help you do this. Why restrict productivity hacks to only work?

5. Go through your out-of-office checklist 📝

If your employees are taking time off, they need to prepare themselves and their team before they unplug. They need to set an out-of-office status, brief co-workers on any pending tasks, and ensure their work is in good hands.

Encourage them to skim through their task list, and mark all their completed work with the relevant documents so that they aren’t leaving behind any ends loose. This will also help give their co-workers context to their work without needing to reach the employee during their break.

Share this out-of-office checklist with them to help them smartly prepare for their leave.

6. Keep work at the office 🏢

One mistake most employees have the habit of doing is taking their work home. The holidays are a time to relax, unwind, and spend time with family so that they can come back refreshed and motivated to get more work done.

Having to finish work while they’re supposed to unwind is surely a downer. Ensure your employees can enjoy their holidays properly by informing managers to avoid assigning work during the off period.

Time management for millennials helps in keeping a balance. We like to call it a productivity hack!

7. Replan schedules for your shift workers and cut down on overtime 

We understand that employees with shift-based roles may not be able to take time off during the holidays. You can keep your business active and also give these employees their deserved break. Start by setting mandatory company-wide holidays on Christmas and New Year’s Day.

You can then ask your shift workers to plan their holidays in such a way that one or two of your employees will be available to pick up any workload that comes in. Planning work during the holiday time is more about cutting the overtime and figuring out schedules smartly.

Use AttendanceBot’s shift planning dashboard to easily move around the work hours and understand the schedules of your shift workers during the holidays.

This is one of the most effective productivity hacks.

8. Have an all-hands meeting to close out the year

All-hands meetings allow you to give your employees more context to the work done, the upcoming goals for the company, plan out timelines for your future launches and allow employees to make suggestions.

With an all-hands meeting, each department can showcase the work done in the past year and the ideas that will be implemented in the coming year to end the year on a sweeter note.

Departments can also take an hour to think of their goals for the next year and the projects they want to start. By planning out their goals and projects, they can hit the ground running when they’re back in the office in January!

If you haven’t had an all-hands meeting before, now’s the best time to start! Read our guide with the best tips on how to organize all-hands meetings.

9. Plan a team-building activity to end the year right

Boosting employee productivity is also about providing a positive work environment that employees would enjoy coming back to post-holiday. Team-building activities are a great mood booster, allowing employees to interact with each other and nudge them to learn more about each other.

Employees who have a good bond are more satisfied with their job and more likely to churn out great work. Consider scheduling team-building events every month to re-engage employees. This can be as small as a movie night or a larger event like a one-day retreat.

Need some ideas for your team-building activity for this festive season? Here are some fun team-building activities to help strengthen employee relationships.

10. Use this season for a quick performance review 📈

This is a relaxed time in the office and since everyone is in a chatty mood, you can use the season to get an overview of where each employee stands, the difficulties they have faced in the previous year, what changes they would like to see, and get an overall understanding of how HR can improve the lives of employees.

Encourage managers to set up one-on-one meetings with their employees to discuss work progress, roadblocks, and future workloads.

The end of the year is a great time for you to review work performance and understand how you can create a productive work environment for your employees.

We hope these 10 tips help you boost employee productivity at work and create an environment that your employees would be eager to come back to in the New Year. We personally love these productivity hacks!

Happy holidays! 🎄