How Office Design/Decoration Can Help to Retain Employee Attention over the Holidays

As we enter December and creep ever closer to the Christmas break, employee attention can begin to slip as your workforce becomes increasingly distracted by their plans for the festive period and general eagerness for the relaxing break. Providing your workforce with this break during the holiday season is highly important to their health, wellbeing, and job satisfaction, but it is important to ensure that they don’t switch off too early and compromise operations in the run up to the holidays, when workloads can often rise in order to cover for the absence of the workforce.

There are many techniques you can use in order to keep employees motivated and productive in the run up to Christmas, even if you do allow them to slow down to some extent. These methods may include the setting of realistic goals that gently remind the workforce that work remains to be done while ensuring they don’t feel overly pressured to complete insurmountable workloads, or the celebration of successes achieved over the course of the year, placing emphasis on both team efforts and individual merit; this will make your staff feel appreciated and encourage them to maintain this high standard of work lest their downturn in performance be recognised and their positive recognition lost. One often overlooked way of improving employee attention in the build up to the Christmas break however is to decorate the office to match the occasion; sure this can be tacky and off-putting if done wrong, but if done correctly it can actually provide your workforce will a much-needed boost.

By allowing your staff to get into the festive mood via the addition of a few festive decorations, happiness and satisfaction will increase throughout the workforce, which will thereby improve upon productivity and negate the potential slump. A few garlands and bands of tinsel, other miscellaneous decorations and - if you really want to go the whole-hog - a Christmas Tree, can all serve as tasteful additions to the office environment. Going too far however and completely covering your office in over-the-top decorations will serve as little more than a distraction and ultimately have the opposite effect to the one desired. Too much emphasis on the holidays can also create a mind-set among employees that the break has already begun, and again have a negative effect on attention and productivity. In simple terms, tasteful moderation is the key to this endeavour.

Beyond simply decorating for Christmas, this time can also be an excellent one for an office refit. Not only is the office largely empty during this time thereby facilitating a simpler fit-out process with minimal disruption, but the fresh environment will also help your workforce to return in the New Year with renewed motivation and inspiration.

Sam Bonson

Sam is an aspiring novelist with a passion for fantasy and crime thrillers. He is currently working as a content writer, journalist & editor as he continues to expand his horizons.