[image courtesy of embryonicboy]
Search online for any amount of time and you’ll find a whole heap of advice on how to make the busy Christmas period bearable. What’s written, however, focuses very much on juggling your own hectic personal life. Little is said about keeping sane while at work. After all, Christmas is often a very stressful time of year and work is often the cause of stress. So here are a few tips on how to get through Christmas 2009.
The weather outside is frightful…
…and the fire is indeed delightful. But, unfortunately, for most of us, we have got some place to go when it snows. Unfortunately, it doesn’t usually wait for the weekend.
And in these colder, darker days, the weather often plays havoc for those who have to get anywhere. Roads become icy while trains and buses are often delayed or cancelled. Then there are the airports. Many of you planning to go away over Christmas with BA will already have the fear of cancelling their trip away. How do you go about planning for that? Well – forgive me for sounding predictable here – but why not do business over the phone? You can organise a meeting easily and with much less expense – and you know you won’t have to cancel because you can’t get there.
Mr Postman’s working overtime
We all know that getting anything in the post at Christmas requires a little more planning than usual. Delivery times are often doubled, or maybe even tripled, at this time of year and the same goes for work documents as it does for Christmas cards. Fortunately, email means we no longer rely on the postal service to get documents to other parts of the world, but sometimes we need to. So when it’s not possible to send attachments, you’ll have to be extra organised.
The day after the night before
Christmas is the party season. And that means hangovers, often during work hours. The morning after the office party down at the Powwownow offices, for example, is a harrowing place. Sore heads, subdued atmosphere and productivity at an all-time low. And, let’s be honest, nobody ever makes it in on time. So why not take care of business from home and have a conference call instead? You can avoid everyone experiencing your hungover face and your boozy breath and you can ignore all the impressions of you dancing on the table with your tie round your head.
The holiday season
Christmas is, of course, holiday season. Which means that half of the office isn’t at work because they’re either skiing, visiting family or sitting at home drinking mulled wine and eating mince pies. There’s not much you can do about that, I’m afraid, apart from prepare for their absence and plan ahead with plenty of time so there’s no last-minute rushes as the Christmas period draws closer.
Everybody’s ill!
Everyone seems to catch a cold or a form of flu during winter. Which, when compiled with the number of people already away on holiday, means the office is a quiet, unproductive place. Sometimes when you’re ill, you know you probably could still get some work done, but the thought of commuting in the cold and wet and the fact that you don’t want to spread your germs around the office means you’ll spend the day at home. That’s where having a conference call can help. Instead of braving the boardroom with a snotty nose and sneezing on your colleagues every 30 seconds, you can arrange to talk with your colleagues over the phone.
NB: We realise that a lot of the advice in this blog involves having a Powwownow, but I’m not sure we should apologise for that. After all, having a Powwownow can really help in the run up to Christmas. So, if you haven’t already, now’s a perfect time to start your office Christmas preparations by signing up.
