2022 Company Christmas Parties in Numbers
Whether you love them or hate them, company Christmas parties can be a great way for employers to recognize the hard work of their staff. And besides that, it can be a good opportunity to bond with your coworkers and get in the mood for a holiday season (if you actually manage to take some time off).
However, it appears that cutting down on Christmas has become an easy way for businesses to save money. And with another recession looming, there doesn’t seem to be room for fancy Christmas parties. At least not for everybody.
Businesses stripping back Christmas parties
As the NerdWallet report found out, 36 percent of employers are stripping back Christmas festivities in 2022.
Delving deeper into the survey, the most popular cutback appears to include poorer decorations (42 percent of companies). Furthermore, 19 percent of employers said ‘no’ to gift-giving events this year. And 32 percent of those who said ‘yes’ are yet planning on scaling down Secret Santa activities (32 percent).
What’s more, 13 percent of firms had to cancel their Christmas parties owing to financial constraints. And 14 percent of employers claimed that they don’t typically host Christmas parties anyway.
These statistics add up to 27 percent of businesses that won’t hold any Christmas parties this year.
What about the budget?
Well, it’s certainly not a walk in the park to organize a party with a very limited amount of money. Elevent polled 500 human resources experts to find out (among other things) what their estimated event budget was for 2022.
More than 26 percent of all respondents claimed that their estimated annual budget for events would be somewhere between $1,000 and $10,000. And above 27 percent of all polled professionals reported having a rough budget of less than $1,000.
On the plus side, throwing a modest party sounds way better than holding no party at all. If we just look back at 2020, the Christmas season was basically canceled due to the pandemic.
And as the HGEM survey states, in 2021, only 21 percent of companies were planning Christmas festivities in the workplace.
So even if your office is soaked in shoddy decorations and you receive a booklet about Nevada that’s nothing like the care package you used to get from your boss, you might still get excited about a shared experience with your workmates this year.