(Photo: Florida Conference, via Flickr)
Last holiday season was less than merry for many businesses and their employees. As the recession deepened, companies canceled Christmas bonuses, nixed holiday parties, and began to lay off workers in huge numbers.
A year later many signs point to the tail end of the recession, but unemployment numbers continue to climb and small businesses still struggle to secure loans. With all of these mixed economic messages, Marketplace wants to hear from you: How are the holidays shaping up at your workplace?
Tell us your strategies for making it through another bumpy December. If you work for a company that depends on fourth quarter sales, what is it doing to make sure business is brisk? If you’re a business owner who can’t afford to give bonuses, are you still managing to spread holiday cheer? If the office party has been canceled, have you come up with a different way to mark the season? Click here to fill us in.
Thanks for sharing with us — and happy Thanksgiving!
Not very merry. First there was a cut in pay, a lot of layoffs and not replacing employees who had quit. So that led to extra work for everyone, so that made people unhappy. Plus no one decorated for the holidays. Nobody felt like they wanted to or had the time to decorate. People talked about what they were going to cut back on for the holidays. It was not a festive time at my place of employment.