What Do You Do With Workplace Traditions?
What to do? What to do?You want to honor the different celebrations and traditions throughout the year. But how do you do that without offending someone, leaving someone out—or becoming so cautious that you stop celebrating anything at all?
In my introduction, I shared some of my family’s traditions and acknowledged that even people celebrating the same holiday may celebrate it very differently.
The same is true of Christmas, Thanksgiving, Ramadan, Diwali, Lunar New Year—or even birthdays.
And workplace traditions don’t have to be religious.
The Friday happy hour isn’t much fun for the recovering alcoholic or the person who simply doesn’t drink. The company picnic may be wonderful for one employee and feel like an obligation to another. The annual Christmas party may have started when the company had twelve employees who all celebrated Christmas. Now there are 75 employees with very different backgrounds, beliefs and preferences.
The problem isn’t necessarily the tradition.
The problem is assuming everyone experiences the tradition the same way you do.
When people feel they have to conform in order to belong, culture suffers.
But eliminating every tradition isn’t the answer either. That creates a sterile workplace where nobody is allowed to have any fun because someone in HR might develop a nervous twitch.
The goal is intentional traditions—not automatic ones.
Sounds good. BUT…
How do you actually do that?
Ask questions.
Start with three steps:
1. Create an environment where people are willing to express their opinions.
Asking doesn’t accomplish much if employees are afraid to tell you what they really think.
2. Examine the value of your current traditions.
What purpose does the tradition serve? Does it still accomplish that purpose? What should stay? What needs to change? And what are you doing simply because you’ve always done it that way?
3. Make changes—and keep evaluating.
Don’t assume that because you changed something, you got it right.
My formula is pretty simple:
Did you ask?
Did they tell you?
Did you listen?
Did you act on what you heard?
Did it work?
Did you evaluate it?
Then do it again.
Here’s what happened at one company.
We had a staff of close to 100 people from very different backgrounds, and instead of trying to create one celebration that somehow worked for everyone, we created teaching moments.
We started in the spring with a picnic.
Everyone was invited to bring either food or a display representing something from their family, culture or traditions—and tell us about it.
For two days, we ate, played, laughed and learned from one another.
We discovered differences, of course.
But we also discovered a lot of similarities.
And we created a book of the recipes, activities and traditions people had shared.
That winter, we tried it again.
This time, people shared how they celebrated—or didn’t celebrate—the holidays. Again, we learned from one another, and again, we created a book.
Something else happened along the way.
A few employees volunteered to lead the events and formed committees to help. The idea expanded into birthdays, retirements and other celebrations.
Eventually, we created another book listing each person’s name and how they wanted to be recognized.
Think about that for a moment.
Instead of management deciding what made employees feel appreciated, we asked them.
Some wanted a fuss. Some didn’t. Some loved public recognition. Others would rather crawl under their desks than have 100 people sing “Happy Birthday” to them.
We stopped assuming.
And that may have been the most important tradition we created.
People felt heard. They felt respected. They felt valued.
We didn’t eliminate traditions.
We created better ones.
Now It’s Your Turn
Look at the traditions in your workplace—and maybe at home with your family and friends.
Which ones still have meaning?
Which ones are running on autopilot?
Which ones could become more inclusive, more personal or simply more fun?
And what new traditions could you create?
I’d love to hear your ideas. Send them to me and I’ll share some of them. Who knows? Maybe together we’ll create another book.
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