Workplace Holiday Considerations

Happy Holidays!

For much of the western world, the month of December brings tidings of Christmas to many. However, diverse workplaces will find a varied group of employees, from those of a Christian tradition which may not celebrate Christmas to very devout Christians and those from parts of the world where the start of a new year is celebrated in other ways.

Many cultures and religions have festivities marked around the change of seasons, especially from winter and days of short daylight and turning towards spring, when we have more daylight. The change of the seasons can have other markers as well; changes can be celebrated based on moon calendars, for example.

As a result, what is encompassed as celebrating ‘the holidays’ isn’t a rejection of the Christian tradition. It embraces all cultural traditions that celebrate the change from one year to the next.

We find many culturally significant holidays throughout the year, but there is an exceptionally dense cluster of significant holidays between October and March.

Viewing this through a lens of times past, this cluster makes sense. In winter, there are no fields to tend. The animals we look after on pasture are now kept in warmer stables. Days are shorter and often colder. Celebrations that remind us of being together with our communities and families and festivals?of cultural significance are clustered to give our spirits the push they might crave. Winter can be troublesome in the best of times. Add in the relief when the darkness of winter starts to lift with the equinox, and you will find people of many religions, cultures, and ethnicities celebrating the new year.

If you are curious about the many celebrations that can fall between October and February, the list collected by the Courier-Tribune is quite extensive:

Companies have different means of facilitating this.

Holidays with cultural significance happen throughout the year for employees, and some of these days require time off for celebrations, travel, or general preparations at home. And if these celebrations fall outside the general time off that companies give due to the cultural background or location of the office, this can lead to pain points.

The good news is that celebrating these differences can be supported with some planning by the employer.

For one, companies can create floating holidays. These days off can be offered for employees to use depending on their own cultural needs. Not everyone might find the Christmas days to be time off they wish to take, but maybe they feel strongly about taking off for the winter equinox a few days earlier. It can be that the celebration of festivities in the late spring or middle of summer holds more personal significance. A system of floating holidays can accompany this.

At Hardsuit Labs, our staff isn’t large enough to allow such flexibility. It makes more sense for us to close for the last week of December, for example, because our work and the work of our partners would lead to mostly downtime for those working.

However, we allow for more personal time off. We give the team flexibility via days to use as they please throughout the year instead of floating holidays. This way, everyone can still enjoy celebrating and relaxing throughout the year. Those who do not need to take these breaks can convert some of this time off into a payout at the end of the year. Finally, we made a conscientious effort to shift our holidays to areas that highlight diversity, equity, and inclusion. For example, we chose not to celebrate Columbus Day but have moved towards taking off for Juneteenth.

Whether or not you will celebrate during the upcoming holiday season, we wish everyone a calm break over the coming end of the year and hope you’ll join us for the last blog post of 2022 next week!