by Kate Lewis for fluxo
The office holiday party has a somewhat infamous connotation to say the least—loose lips from too much to drink, overly honest conversations with your boss, and a wicked hangover. A friend who works in HR once told me that the cause of the most non-performance related firings are, you guessed it, office holiday parties.
But, infamy aside, they’re also a ton of fun and good for company morale. You get to hang out with your coworkers (hopefully you like at least a few of them), drinks and food are paid for, and it’s a welcome break from the weekly 9 to 5 schedule at a notoriously burnt out time of the year. It’s also a marker and celebration not only of the holidays, but of finishing up the work-year and all the accomplishments that came with it.
So, what about the remote teams and companies—what do their employees get? A slack message to sign off early? Holiday-themed care packages sent to their homes? Don’t even get me started on zoom holiday parties. Those should be made illegal.
This is a large-scale example of the day to day patterns we’ve seen with remote work—a lack of routine turns into a lack of seasonality. In the same way your work day feels like it has no beginning or end when it’s entirely spent inside your apartment, when your whole team is remote and unable to meet for a holiday party, the year wraps without a proper end as well. December blends into January like any other month, making the year’s end feel less significant (when it is significant, work-wise and life-wise). Aside from the few days break you get for Christmas and New Year’s, there’s not that company-wide acknowledgement and celebration of the end of the year.
It’s yet another aspect of work/office culture that remote people and teams lose out on. Now, the perks of working remotely might outweigh the perks of an office holiday party for some people, or a lot of people, but it’s still worth investigating—how can the work-from-home community still experience (and enjoy) the holidays and end of the year from a workplace context?
While this may not be the answer, this year fluxo is hosting a happy hour for all the remote working New Yorkers who are missing out on an office holiday party. Add a little festivity to the last work week before Christmas by meeting us for a drink (on us).
Click HERE to reserve your spot!
