Holiday Headaches

Workforce, Dec, 2000 by Victor D. Infante

Peace on earth? Not in HR, where religious differences, the end-of-the-year paperwork crunch, and the pressures of holiday commerce collide. If your idea of coping is extra-strength eggnog, here's a shot of some real relief.

Ah, the holidays. Peace on earth, good will towards men. A time to gather with friends and families and rejoice in each other's company. A time to celebrate the end of a long year, and the beginning of a new one. A time of great religious significance for Christians, Jews, and other religious groups.

A time when the HR Department should ask for hazard pay.

If you're working in a retail business, you're moving at break-neck speed to hire holiday help, while figuring out how to keep the employees who need a little shopping time happy. Or maybe if you're in an office, you're dealing with a Jewish employee who's a little put off by the company's "Christmas party" and a non-religious employee who's upset about the vast amounts of religious decorations in the office down the hall.

Adventures in Diversity

And you're probably asking yourself, "Is it just me, or does absolutely no one want to be here?" While some problems seem to be universal, no two companies seem to have the exact same set of issues in December. Below, we look at three dissimilar companies--Marmaxx, ADP, and Jellyvision--to see what vexes HR departments at this time of year, and how they overcome the holiday headaches.

Tony Brown laughs out loud when asked about holiday HR issues. As senior learning and development specialist for Marmaxx, the parent company of retailers T. J. Maxx and Marshall's, he's just gotten out of a meeting on that very subject. Except that the holiday in question wasn't Christmas, but rather Halloween.

"We had complaints from two sides," he says. "The Wiccans, who disapproved of the witch decorations, and the fundamentalist Christians, who had trouble with the 'occult symbolism."'

For Brown, holiday issues are important, not only because they serve as a microcosm--and often as a flashpoint--of greater diversity issues, but also because they directly affect business results for his company.

"Suppose I'm pagan," he says, by way of example, "and I'm walking around a department and I'm seeing the standard, green, warty-faced witch, and I know the history, know that behind the trick-or-treat thing is a history of witch-burning. I say, 'That's not who I am.' How comfortable would I be stepping forward? Maybe I won't get burned, but maybe I'll get looked at weird. Maybe I don't bring my full self to the table. I'm sitting in a meeting, and I've got an angle based on something in my past, but I've learned not to bring my full self to the table. One, you've got one more person who has to wear his mask at work, and two, you've got a good idea that didn't get out."

With Christmas, the issues are all the more poignant.

"I work in retail," Brown says. "Our holiday is Christmas, and we make no bones about that. It's a holiday of consumption. We celebrate Christmas around here, but we're conscious of its secularization. When you walk around the building, you don't see manger scenes. You see trees and stuff"

Some departments, he adds, put up Kwanzaa or Hanukkah decorations for themselves, but Brown admits that there are still some people in the company who find the differing attitudes towards decoration overwhelming, including fundamentalist Christians who are not pleased with the secular side of the holiday that the company embraces.

Which brings Brown around to his notion of the role of diversity.

"Say I'm a fundamentalist Christian, "he says, "and in my department I have someone who's gay, and this person is out and open about being gay. Now, we're are committed to an environment where that person is fine, but we also have to remember that, for a Christian, that might be uncomfortable. There's an issue there. If you're going to be committed to diversity, you have to be committed to those who aren't in favor of it.

"Look at something as simple as holiday decorations. I have a set of assumptions as to what the holidays are about. Not everyone shares them. As long as we keep assuming that it's up to them to catch up with you, nothing gets done, and people continue not bringing their full selves to the table. When it comes down to it, we have to be conscious of the fact that what we think it is may not be what it is for everybody. They may go along with us, but we may still lose something."

Brown insists that you can never encourage tolerance in the workplace without listening to everyone's voice, even those that don't fall into the conventional "politically correct." He addresses these situations in the same way he did with the aforementioned Halloween decorations.

"I begin dealing with these sorts of issues by asking two simple questions: Have you made it known that you found something offensive, and are you ready to live with it?" Brown finds that getting people to simply communicate often resolves problems more easily and more efficiently than any guideline or policy--and helps ease tensions in the office.