Read Our Blog On Culture Change

As businesses gear up for the 2024 holiday season, innovative employee engagement activities are taking centre stage. Forward-thinking companies are creating memorable experiences that foster connection, boost morale, and spread festive cheer. These activities use digital technology to reach out to employees and engage them differently. Unlike the traditional year-end drinks party, this doesn’t take money.

With call centres, you can always detect when a standard script is being followed. But the positive CX experiences we remember are the ones where, in just a little way, some rapport has been established. One lousy experience on the phone can destroy millions worth of advertising investment. That lousy experience may be over something little. Getting those little things right can often have the biggest positive consequences.

As we enter December, expecting employees to be interested in doing things differently is unreasonable. Naturally, they want the business of the year to end well. But most are on a fixed track, focusing on their performance metrics and hoping for the best. Leaders are in limbo between 2025 business plan approval and deciding what to say about the future at the year-end party. Expect to hear ‘Agility’ more often in discussions.

This is the time of year when companies are finishing their budget processes. Leaders and senior managers have signed up to ambitious targets for 2025, and many will quietly be wondering how they will deliver on them. Mid-junior managers and staff will almost certainly have no idea what is coming down the pipeline: they’re hanging on for the year-end party! Humans tend to repeat the approaches we know.

The modern workplace is dominated by a managerialist approach prioritising efficiency, control, and standardisation over genuine leadership. While you may think it has value, the trend creates significant barriers to success in our increasingly chaotic world. You only have to look at global politics, national institutions, and the business world to see the impact of a paucity of leadership at every level.

Many of us who have had breakfast in hotels are familiar with a device known as a conveyor toaster. Wherever bread is served, there’s usually one of these standing by, ready to toast bread slices to a soft golden hue in a nonstop sequence to the delight of sleepy guests. Except it never does. For me it provides a valuable analogy for the approach to organisational culture that prevails in many businesses.