Thanksgiving. Friendsgiving. Holiday party #1. Your niece’s basketball tournament. Holiday party #2. Holiday party #3. Your son’s school holiday program. The annual family outing to see The Nutcracker. A week home with the parents and extended family.
Sounds fun, doesn’t it?
Add in gift-buying, travel-planning, and actual travel, plus end-of-year work deadlines, flu season, social pressures, and family dynamics, and the fun of holiday season can get muddied with stress and complicated emotions for many people.
Amidst the office parties and festive events, employers should take care to proactively support employee mental health throughout this period to help teams be able to mitigate stress, maintain their wellbeing, and genuinely enjoy their time with loved ones. In this article, we share how the competing stressors can impact employee mental health and seven things employers can do to support employees through the end of the year.
How the holiday season can affect employee mental health
In a 2023 poll by the American Psychological Association, 89% of U.S. adults said they experience stress from at least one thing during the holidays, and 41% said their stress levels are higher during the holidays than at other times of year. Finances are the biggest cause of stress for people in this period, with 58% of respondents saying they experience stress from spending too much during the season or not having enough to spend. In fact, another 2023 survey of U.S. workers from Monster found that 34% of workers take on a second job during the holidays to better afford the extra expenditures of the season.
But it’s not money and busy schedules alone. The holiday season in the U.S. and Western nations caters to those who celebrate Christian holidays and Western traditions. For those who don’t celebrate those holidays, the season can cause feelings of exclusion both generally and in their workplaces. It can also heighten concerns of experiencing discrimination for their religion and traditions, or for not celebrating the Christian holidays. In the APA poll, 42% of people celebrating Jewish holidays and 55% of those celebrating other non-Christian holidays expressed this concern.
The holidays are also a particularly hard time for people experiencing grief, those who cannot be with family, and those navigating substance misuse and recovery. For many, this season brings sharp reminders of loved ones, and even employees who seem “fine” day-to-day may find themselves emotionally taxed by gatherings or missing traditions. At the same time, national data shows that alcohol use, binge drinking, and other substance use tend to spike during the holiday season – especially around Christmas and New Year’s – which can exacerbate existing struggles or create added vulnerability for those in or seeking recovery.
Taken together, these pressures can leave employees feeling overwhelmed, isolated, or disconnected at a time when expectations for joy and togetherness are at their highest.
Here are seven ways employers can help.
7 ways workplaces can bolster employee mental health during the holidays
1. Anticipate heightened stress and train managers to recognize the signs of growing mental health concerns.
While the added excitement of the holiday season will show up at work, so too will the added stress, pressure, and grief people experience. If that stress starts to affect employees’ ability to be themselves or show up in the ways they need to, it could contribute to mental health concerns. Anticipating that stress means employers can proactively communicate about it with their employees and put in place additional measures to detect worsening mental health before issues escalate.
To help your whole team navigate the season and any additional strain, train leaders and managers across the organization to look out for signs of extreme stress and potential depression and/or anxiety disorders. These signs may include:
- Low energy, fatigue, or employees saying they’re not sleeping
- Reduced concentration and focus at work
- A loss of interest in things that normally animate them
- Social withdrawal, or a decreased level of participation in meetings and team events
- Missed deadlines or absenteeism
- Increased agitation
Despite increased busyness for everyone in the organization at this time, when it might be tempting to take meetings off the calendar, make sure managers maintain a schedule of consistent 1-on-1s with direct reports throughout to proactively check in about their wellbeing, catch warning signs, encourage them to utilize their mental health benefits, and ensure employees have a dedicated time to share concerns if needed.
2. Help employees manage end-of-year deadlines with graduated due dates.
The end of the calendar year tends to bring deadlines for annual and quarterly strategic initiatives, big client projects, and work that must be finished before the next budget cycle starts. To avoid having employees put in all their wrap-up hours mere days before the deadline, keeping pressure high right before holiday breaks, establish graduated due dates for different parts of the projects leading up to the final deadline. That way, you can ensure that (a) everything is on track for the projects in advance, and (b) employees can better manage their time, workload, and stress in the preceding weeks.
3. Exercise inclusivity, sensitivity, and neutrality around holiday-themed communications and events.
As we mentioned above, so much of the media, language, and focus between November and December centers on Christian holidays and Western traditions. Of course, however, huge groups of people and employees don’t celebrate these holidays. Even for those that do, not everyone celebrates in the same ways.
When recognizing this season through internal communications, holiday events, discussions, and time off, proactively support all employees by using language and activities that include rather than exclude:
- Invite all employees to share about their holiday traditions (at any time of year).
- Allow people to share or participate in office holiday events and discussions to whatever level they feel comfortable with.
- With financial concerns affecting the majority of people, ensure holiday activities don’t require anyone to spend money. While fun for some, for those who feel strapped, it can add stress on multiple levels – financial stress, as well as social pressure and the potential stigma of not participating.
Additionally, and importantly, grant adequate time off for employees celebrating holidays from other non-Christian, religious and non-Western, cultural traditions throughout the year to ensure they can celebrate with loved ones at the time and in the way that is important to them.
4. Privately acknowledge grieving employees.
Employees experiencing grief and bereavement may feel particularly affected or overwhelmed during this time. If you know employees have lost a loved one, undergone major medical treatment, or supported loved ones going through such treatment, consider sending a thoughtful card, gift, or gesture to acknowledge the difficulty of this period. Mindful gestures like these can show grieving employees that their organization understands, cares about their wellbeing, and can be a resource when they need help.
5. Offer more remote-work flexibility.
Navigating all the schedule demands and travel requirements of holiday season is challenging no matter who you are. For teams working on a hybrid or mostly in-office schedule, giving employees more flexibility around work location through the holidays can help ease the mental and financial burden and allow them the capacity to show up better at work.
6. Ensure time off is truly time off.
The 2023 Monster Holiday Work Life Balance survey found that 41% of employees still work on their holiday breaks, between checking and sending emails, and even having to participate in work calls. No one can truly rest and celebrate with loved ones if they’re expected to remain responsive to work matters. And not getting a proper break from work leads to higher rates of burnout and exhaustion – which are already high. According to a 2024 survey by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, 52% of full-time employees felt burned out in the previous year as a result of their job, and 36% said that work demands negatively impacted their mental health. To help support your employees’ mental health and prevent conditions or worsened symptoms, let time off actually be time off, away from work. Exemplify this in your leaders’ behavior, encourage it, and enforce it.
7. Promote your mental health benefits and resources widely throughout the holiday season.
When employees need mental health support, you want them to know where to go and feel comfortable seeking help. That’s not a given in many industries or communities, where the stigma of seeking help remains high.
Over the holiday period, ramp up proactive communication about your organization’s mental health benefits, including your EAP and digital mental health platform, if you have them, to help normalize mental health support and make it readily available. Promote any video series or digital workshops available to employees on issues that intensify at this time – things like financial planning and wellbeing, coping with grief and loss, navigating family dynamics, setting healthy boundaries, and coping strategies during stressful times. And ensure your employee resource groups (ERGs) are well-supported and well-advertised so employees in all demographics and communities can find the support they need. ERGs and peer support groups may want to host their own additional, proactive check-ins with members and share outside resources that can aid them further.
Happier, healthier holidays and beyond
Supporting employee mental health during the holidays isn’t just a seasonal gesture – it’s a meaningful investment in your team’s wellbeing and your organization’s health overall. When employers anticipate stressors, create inclusive practices, and proactively promote accessible mental health resources throughout one of the most stressful and emotionally potent times of the year, they help employees move through with greater ease and resilience. In doing so, they show their capacity to take care of employees when it matters most.
