To boost holiday productivity, give your employees more time off

With holiday celebrations, endless shopping lists and end-of-year plans in sight, the last thing on your employees’ minds is work.

While this may make managers want to double down on productivity targets, it could be better to simply let go of expectations and accept that employees are more distracted than usual, says David Powell, president of Prodoscore, a productivity-tracking AI software company.

“If you know your employees are going to kind of mail it in a little bit, instead of fighting that, is there a way to embrace it and create space for it,” Powell says. “Let's just focus on the heavy lift and try to create some space for our employees to have a little more flexibility.”

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While it’s easy to assume that productivity drops are the fault of working from home, Powell says his research found that employees had a drop-off in productivity around the holidays pre-pandemic, too. During the pandemic, productivity actually increased for many employees, who weren’t able to travel or participate in normal holiday activities.

However, that overwork had an adverse effect, with employees struggling with burnout and proper work-life balance. Additionally, employees are shifting their attitudes around how they spend their days, using time they would have spent commuting or even chatting with coworkers to run errands and focus on personal activities.

Employers shouldn’t expect employees to be working non-stop from home, because employees weren't doing that in the office either, Powell says. Understanding how the day has changed to allow employees more freedom to balance their work and home life is a good thing.

Read more: Working hard or hardly working? Why it’s OK that your employees take breaks from being productive

“In the office, there was the appearance of work. We would talk to coworkers and that was viewed as work because we were in the office. Now, without that, people take that freedom to run a few errands,” Powell says. “In the before times, there was this idea that people wanted work-life balance and now people want work-life separation.”

While it’s important to motivate your employees to do their best work, Powell recommends that employers think about the things that actually need to be done before the end of the year, instead of pushing employees to fill their time with unnecessary tasks just to appear busy.

Additionally, if employers know that the majority of their employees plan to take PTO during the holiday season, it may make more sense to close the office entirely, and focus on an the effort earlier in the month.

“Instead of being irritated by the fact that a bunch of people want to take time off for the holidays, just embrace it and say, Hey, we're going to give everybody that week around the holidays,” he says. “Then you can hold employees accountable to giving you their all at the first part of December, in exchange for embracing the fact that they're probably not going to do a ton of work there at the end of the year.”

Then, when the new year does roll around, employees will be refreshed and ready to start off on the right foot — with your company, instead of looking elsewhere.

“Before, employers would entice employees with open concept offices or a ping pong table or nap room, but are those things really compelling anymore?” Powell says. “For the remote worker, what is compelling is having the 10 days off around Christmas and New Year’s. We’re going to see a lot more of that flex time if employers want to entice and retain quality employees.”