A recent survey by leading outsourced communications company, Moneypenny, shows that Christmas parties and Secret Santas are off for many offices this year in Wales, owing to the current pandemic.
The survey showed that 91% of Welsh offices won’t be having a traditional Christmas party. Instead, 20% said their office is planning a virtual Christmas party, 17.8% said there won’t be any type of party, virtual or otherwise, or a Secret Santa either and 40% said party plans haven’t yet been decided. Nationally, younger workers aged 18-24 were the most excited about virtual Christmas parties (29%) compared with 11% across all age groups.
The thought of a virtual Christmas party is not filling Welsh workers with joy, as only 4% of said they’re excited about the prospect. In contrast, in the West Midlands and London a higher proportion of workers are excited about a virtual office party (24% and 19% respectively.)
However 27% of Welsh workers said their office is planning to hold a Secret Santa, which is higher than offices elsewhere, for example only 10% of Scottish and 12% of Northern Irish offices are planning a Secret Santa.
The CEO of Moneypenny, Joanna Swash, therefore decided to give a special thank you to the company’s 1,000 employees this Christmas by providing a traditional turkey, ham, or nut roast, for every employee. As a special morale boosting surprise to announce the Christmas gift this week, Joanna has sent a special video message for staff in which she unveiled a turkey with all the trimmings.
Joanna commented:
“We decided to offer all our staff a Christmas dinner on us, because we’ve effectively been in our people’s homes with home working for most of the year and want to say a special thank you to them and their families. Like many businesses across the UK, our employees have had to deal with a huge amount of change to work from home, with new equipment, changes to routines and new forms of communications and they’ve managed it brilliantly, while continuing to deliver a fantastic service to our clients.”
The turkeys, hams and nut roasts, will be delivered to Moneypenny’s Wrexham offices on 23 December in the Turkey Truck. The company has a turkey and tinsel bot ready so its staff can make their choice of meat or nut roast and can choose a collection slot on the 23 December, with Christmas refreshments while they wait.
Moneypenny will also have a gift bot for staff to donate Christmas gifts for underprivileged children in the Wrexham area, and there will be a virtual Christmas Market for staff, on Workplace.
