It’s not too late! Creating a holiday tradition your employees enjoy, your clients appreciate, or your community (or another community) benefits from is worth the effort. Check out these three suggestions for creating meaningful holiday traditions in your construction contracting business.
Gathering Tradition
Let’s have a party!
Just because you haven’t spent much time preparing for a lavish holiday party doesn’t mean you can’t have a gathering. With last-minute parties, the fun is that guests are there to be with one another and enjoy good company. Whether you make a restaurant reservation or decide to party at the office, in your home, or a rented space, keep things simple. Décor can be accomplished with a few well-placed vases of cut flowers or pots of poinsettias.
Like any other party, the elements are basic.
Guests
Food
Entertainment
Note: if you’re planning a party for your employees, you may wish to invite your regular subs depending on your teams’ relationship with them.
Consider this last-minute food and entertainment package rolled into one. It’s an entertaining food competition. Purchase kits of prebaked cookies like this or gingerbread building packs similar to this. You can also use refrigerated cookie dough to prebake simple round cookies to have available for your guests. You may wish to delegate this task to one or more of your staff.
Provide decorating ingredients such as icing or sprinkles. Divide the guests into teams, give them the provisions and the tools, then let the decorating and the fun begin. See who can build the best cookies or houses.
Making cookie-building contests a tradition for your company may start small with the suggestions given above but wait until next year when everyone knows they’re going to be a part of the “The Great Cookie Build.” Forming teams ahead of the event, determining strategy, and deploying the proper equipment, will raise the tradition to new heights.
Cook Up a New Tradition
Think about skipping the old (and some would say tired) Secret Santa exchanges or White Elephant shenanigans among your staff and create a new gift-giving tradition with a twist.
Everyone builds the gift, and everyone receives the present when you ask your team to take part in creating a [your company name] Cookbook. Give your employees the assignment – bring or email their favorite recipes for each category you give them.
For example, you can go the traditional route with section assignments like:
Appetizers
Meat Dishes
Vegetables
Beverages
Desserts
Or you can spice it up with themes like:
One Pot Meals
Oven Baked Goodness
Pasta with Pizazz
Salute the Salad
On the Grill
Dog Toppings
My Famous (fill in the blank)
Drinking in the Goodness
Sweet Tooth
Put as few limits on the options as possible. Authentic recipes with ingredients and instructions are great, but so are funny recipes, off-the-wall recipes, and (as it were) half-baked recipes. Letting personalities, backgrounds, and ethnic food preferences shine through is part of the fun. Encourage participation in every way you can. You may even wish to say that only those who contribute can receive a copy of the finished product.
Once the recipes are assembled, you have options for producing the cookbook.
Self-printing
Self-publishing with a service like this.
Or use a cookbook publishing service like this.
The benefits of creating a [your company name] Cookbook go beyond giving your team a way to give one another a special gift. For example, there is an element of team building in the process. Include a section in your cookbook titled “Get to know the chef,” and your employees learn more about their coworkers – certainly a team-building plus.
One more benefit of producing a corporate cookbook is the option to give a memorable gift to your vendors, service providers, or customers.
Producing an annual [your company name] Cookbook is an employee-friendly tradition that merits consideration.
Generosity Tradition
Giving your employees a simple option for generosity giving is one more way to tout company culture and develop a team-building atmosphere – while generously giving.
Ironically, there are so many options available that it may seem overwhelming. From the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation to local organizations like Homeless Engagement Lift Partnership (HELP) and about a boatload (official accounting term) of other alternatives, there are places to give.
Establishing a Generosity Tradition in your construction company may be as simple as choosing an organization to support with monetary donations and time-based volunteering. Giving your employees options for supporting the organization, such as fund matching or days off for volunteering or group volunteer efforts, might be sufficient.
Another option to consider is basing your construction company’s generosity giving on a construction-related theme. Of course, some entities, such as Habitat for Humanity, jump to mind. Other building or rebuilding objectives might spark enthusiasm among your employees. For example, check out How To Donate To Ukraine Relief Efforts.
This article, How To Inspire Employees To Engage In Your Giving Program, has ten tactical tips well worth heeding.
Building with Traditions
Traditions connect people with each other – it is the mortar used with the blocks of building a healthy, profitable, sustainable construction business. And it goes deeper than that. Traditions connect the past, present, and future.
Traditions reinforce the values your business is based on. Your employees must be a part of company traditions. It connects them to the greater whole of what you stand for, what you care about, and how you conduct business. It is about shared values and mutual satisfaction. Remember, small things can add to why your employees are loyal to your construction business.
Reflection: Which of the Holiday Traditions mentioned above would you like to begin this year? What do you need to do to get it started? Who can oversee the fledgling beginnings of this new tradition? To whom can you delegate?
Construction Contractors look to The Profit Constructors to provide advocacy in dealing with:
Clients and customers
Employees and subcontractors
Vendors and service providers
Governmental entities
Working with The Profit Constructors gives Construction Contractors the means to organize their operations in ways that help them:
Remain informed
Avoid hassles
Reduce risks
Be future-ready
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