Holiday party planning has been part of my job for years. We moved to Seattle Labor Day weekend 2001. I started my first job in the area on October 1. The two biggest projects I worked on in my first few months at that job- the company Oktoberfest party (one of the founders was German) and then the company Christmas party (which was the most amazing potluck ever).

I left that company right after the Oktoberfest party 3 years later and started at my current company on November 1. The first major thing I worked on? The unit Christmas party. At the time, I couldn’t believe our budget (we’re a non-profit after all) and how much work went into the event. It was off-site. We flew in members of the team from across the state. There were games with prizes and party favors for everyone.

Times change. In the years since then, I have changed departments; we’ve had good years and bad years. The year there was a huge division wide party, I worked through it. Another year, I planned a great off-site party for my unit but we had to cancel due to weather.

Since I switched to my new division/department, we haven’t had an organized event.

Mostly it’s been because of company finances. As a leadership team, our department has decided that units could do their own pot lucks or little parties, but that we weren’t going to spend a lot of company money on an event.

And yet, for the last two years, I’ve found myself organizing last minute events. Last year was actually last minute- my executive director walked into my office one morning shortly before Christmas and said he wanted to buy pizza for the whole department for lunch, and authorize managers in our other locations do the same for staff.

This year, I got about two week’s notice and a budget. The party was yesterday. The leftovers are lining the reception area outside my office today.

So what happened? Why did we go from we’re not doing anything to we’re doing something?

The problem is that the company doesn’t have a unified policy regarding holiday parties. My previous division had money in the budget (when we did budget) set aside for employee appreciation that was often used for holiday parties, but that was actually manager discretion. Of course, when we went from having a budget to simply being cost centers, no manager wanted to give up that “budget” and insisted that they had money in their budget for a holiday party. In fact, that’s how things started this year.

That division got a brand new VP who came in while we were doing budget for next year, so she really didn’t know that her departments did NOT have money in the budget for holiday parties this year, because there was no budget for this year.

My department leadership had decided that in light of the layoffs and everything else going on this year, it would send the wrong message to staff to then spend a lot of money on a holiday party. But managers in other departments disagreed. It started with those managers in the other division who had gotten to the point of feeling entitled to have their holiday celebrations, and they started saying to their new VP “We have money in our budgets set aside for the holiday parties. Can we have them?” Again, this wasn’t true- they didn’t have a budget for anything this year, but their VP didn’t really know that and said yes, they could have the parties.

We’re the mean ones. Units in my department work closely with units in that division, and they started asking about a holiday party. I gave the answer our leadership team decided on. But then, the other big department in our division decided to have a huge holiday party.

At that point, my leaders went to our vice president- who was in the meeting when we decided against a holiday party –and said “This lack of consistency is causing real issues. We’re trying to be responsible regarding the company financials, but we can’t be the only ones. Our staff start to feel like they’re being punished if everyone but them gets a party.”

The VP agreed and then agreed to authorize a budget for our department party.

Two days later, I got the assignment to plan it.

I’m not against holiday parties. I’m not even against being asked to plan them at the last minute. I’m good at this and it’s fun. But it does bother me when I am giving one message to staff in November and a different one in December. It does bother me that our company leadership doesn’t provide direction on this- especially in years where the only message they’ve been sending has been about the need to cut costs, in a year when we laid off staff company wide, and we’re still trying to figure out how to cut a few more millions from our costs.

True, even if you pooled all the money spent on all holiday parties company wide, it wouldn’t have been enough to save even one admin job, but how many staff really understand that? Or do they see some of their co-workers gone on Dec 1, and a big catered party two weeks later?

We’re not too big to have a organizational policy. My company is a major employer in our state, but it is still only a state-wide company. We’re not a national, let alone multi-national organization. It would not be hard for our executive leadership to get together and figure this out. Give us some direction. Sure managers love it when you say things are up to their discretion, but highly visible events, like company paid for parties, shouldn’t be discretionary. There needs to be an organizational decision, so that the message staff receives isn’t dependent on their manager, director, or even VP.

What about you? And now that I’ve been a bit of a bah humbug (even while staring at the leftover goodies from our party), what, if anything, does your company do for the holidays? Is there a company policy? Or is it left up to individual units or departments?