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How to Keep Employees Motivated During the Holidays

With Christmas and the new year right around the corner, now is a time when productivity slips, attention spans shorten, and minds wander. It’s no surprise considering there’s so much going on outside the company: trip planning, shopping, decorating, and family gatherings. Inside, it’s supposed to be business as usual, but, the holiday season takes over. No one wants to be a Grinch during the holidays and it’s easy to let festive spirit slow things down. However, in the remaining days of the year, the pressure is on and it’s not always simple to stay the course.

How to Keep Employees Motivated during the Holidays

While some team members will be on vacation, others will still be showing up and this creates an unstable atmosphere. What’s more, you are not immune from the holiday fever and find it’s difficult enough just to keep yourself on-task. If you’re not careful, you’ll unconsciously let it be known and that’s tantamount to telling everyone to take it easy and slack off. While you certainly don’t want to portray yourself as Ebenezer Scrooge, you do need to set an example and temper your own excitement with good work ethic.

Keeping your employees engaged in their work can be a challenge during the holiday season. Considering that the holiday season lasts roughly from the week of Thanksgiving until after New Year’s, managers who don’t find ways to keep their team motivated risk losing a lot of money during the fall and winter months. —Business News Daily.com

Doing so won’t necessarily be simple and might even strike you as unnatural, but, if you want to be an effective leader, you’ve got to learn how to play different roles well. That’s what being an entrepreneur is really all about: being flexible and knowing when to take off one hat to put on another. For your employees, the holidays are not only exciting and distracting, it’s the end of the year and looking forward to next year takes their eyes off today. Here are some helpful tips on how to keep employees motivated during the holidays:

Be flexible with schedules. The last thing you should do is create conflict and ill will during this time of year. Try to be as flexible as possible with schedules and don’t be afraid to ask for others to step-up when necessary. If you act with team effort, you’ll get a lot more cooperation and positive responses.
Let the excitement in the office. There’s nothing wrong with allowing employees to decorate, exchange gifts, and fill the space with holiday music. It puts the spirit of the season to work for you instead of against you.
Openly communicate expectations. No one likes the sneaky, sly boss who surprise employees with unpleasant things. You have goals to reach and tasks to get done, so don’t just bark out orders, communicate in a friendly manner and always open up the discussion to new ideas — you might be very surprised by what you hear.
Actively engage and manage your team. While people don’t like to be micromanaged, they do appreciate being guided. You’re in a position of authority and this is a wonderful opportunity to sharpen your leadership skills, as well as demonstrate your ability to motivate.
Take time to reflect on the year’s accomplishments. Remind people of this year’s accomplishment and be sure to give congratulations with enthusiasm. Speak about being vigilant and finishing the year strong for the good of everyone in your organization.

In addition to these, you should also carve out some time for a party or even a dinner. Keep it simple and ask for ideas from your team about what they’d like to do and where to hold it. Give small gifts or even a Christmas card to your employees and let them know just how appreciative you are of their work and dedication.

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How Fiat Inc. Nearly 4X’d Revenue by Mapping Every Workflow

October 7, 2026 No Comments

.elementor-widget-text-editor{font-family:var( –e-global-typography-text-font-family ), Sans-serif;font-weight:var( –e-global-typography-text-font-weight );color:var( –e-global-color-text );}.elementor-widget-text-editor.elementor-drop-cap-view-stacked .elementor-drop-cap{background-color:var( –e-global-color-primary );}.elementor-widget-text-editor.elementor-drop-cap-view-framed .elementor-drop-cap, .elementor-widget-text-editor.elementor-drop-cap-view-default .elementor-drop-cap{color:var( –e-global-color-primary );border-color:var( –e-global-color-primary );} Solid Field Work, Fragmented Systems Fiat, Inc., a commercial HVAC services company serving facility and property managers, had no shortage of work. Service calls, maintenance contracts, and project-based jobs kept crews busy, and leadership was actively exploring growth into new markets and segments. What the business lacked wasn’t demand — it was the internal structure to scale that demand profitably. Growth Was Outrunning the Org Chart Leadership brought in Waters Business Consulting Group to bring clarity to operations, financial performance, and growth strategy. The diagnosis revealed a business running on informal habits rather than documented process: no clearly mapped workflow from marketing through service, production, and accounting, and no consistent distinction between service work, maintenance contracts, and larger projects — a gap that was quietly eating into margins. Larger projects had no formalized checklist process for materials, equipment, and leadership oversight, and the sales pipeline lived largely in people’s heads rather than in the company’s Simpro system, limiting visibility into new opportunities and revenue predictability. The people side had similar gaps. Sales and account management roles lacked clear definitions of responsibility and compensation, technician productivity and billable efficiency weren’t systematically tracked, and there were no formal KPIs to catch over-labor on jobs before it became a pattern. As Fiat evaluated merger opportunities and new-market expansion, integration planning and payroll coordination added another layer of complexity leadership needed help navigating — along with guidance on the right legal structure for the business itself. Mapping the Business From Marketing to Production WBCG’s approach started with detailed workflow mapping sessions spanning marketing, sales, estimating, accounting, scheduling, and production — creating, for the first time, a documented picture of how work actually moved through the company. That mapping led directly to structural fixes: clear process distinctions between time-and-material service work and project-based jobs, approval checkpoints like credit qualification and project-size thresholds built into the workflow, and a formal checklist process for projects above defined dollar amounts. On the growth side, WBCG guided leadership in defining target market segments and refining how warranty, maintenance, and service offerings were positioned, while formal position descriptions brought clarity to sales and account management roles. Lead tracking tools and better use of Simpro’s reporting capabilities gave leadership real pipeline visibility for the first time. Underneath it all, new financial models analyzed labor as a percentage of revenue across service, maintenance, and project categories, and technician productivity tracking gave leadership a way to measure billable efficiency directly. As merger conversations progressed, WBCG also supported integration planning, payroll coordination, and job costing alignment, along with organizational chart clarity to keep reporting lines clean through the transition. The Results: Revenue Nearly Quadrupled The financial trajectory reflects the operational overhaul. Revenue grew from approximately $1.32 million in 2018 to $5.19 million in 2021 — including a roughly 69% jump from $3.06 million in 2020 to $5.19 million in 2021 alone. Gross profit grew right alongside it, from about $640,000 in 2018 to $1.68 million in 2021. Beyond the numbers, Fiat now has a documented end-to-end workflow, clearer operational lines between service, maintenance, and project work, real pipeline visibility, and the organizational and financial clarity needed to navigate merger integration with confidence. The business is positioned toward higher-value work with a refined sense of exactly which markets it’s targeting. Ready to Bring Structure to Your Growth? Strong field performance can only take a business so far without the systems to support it. If your growth feels harder to manage than it should, a free consultation can help identify where structure is missing — and what to fix first. Contact Waters Business Consulting Group to schedule a free consultation.

How Entrepreneurs Can Minimize Customer Anxiety When Taking Over an Established Business

January 23, 2025 No Comments

Purchasing an established business can be an exciting venture, but it often comes with its own set of challenges, particularly in reassuring existing customers during the transition.

Here’s the Real Reason MoviePass is Failing So Spectacularly (Hint_ It’s Not what You Think)

September 13, 2018 No Comments

MoviePass is failing in-part because it didn’t fully understand the business on which it tried to build its own empire. A slew of news interviews with theater operators points this fact out. They say the service just doesn’t understand how the cinema business works. But, perhaps more importantly, what’s caused things to go so badly in such a short time is it was always too good to be true. In other words, the company overpromised. That’s really why the startup is quickly sputtering out-of-control. And, it’s what gets far too many fledgling companies in big time trouble. Eager to please and deliver jaw-dropping results, they promise the moon and hardly leave earth’s atmosphere. Biggest Overpromising Pitfalls Undoubtedly, critics say it’s time to face reality and close up shop. Irate subscribers and suing shareholders might disagree. (The former wants out, while the latter wants its investment money back.) But, it’s now apparent the movie-selling service just can’t operate as it has. And, for good reason. When you overpromise, you put undue pressure on yourself. Not to mention, you artificially raise expectations to unreachable heights. How many times has a salesperson promised to increase your company’s exposure by 50%, double your client list, and quadruple your profit margin? In this age of instantaneous satisfaction (thanks, technology!), many entrepreneurs and corporate leaders are so eager to appease stakeholders and worried about the bottom line that they seize amorphous opportunities and are disappointed with the results. —Forbes.com There’s more downsides to overpromising. You’re not only letting down one customer, you’re also sending a message that you just aren’t competent or capable of delivering. Then, there’s also the fact that you create resentment among your employees — toward you and each other. 3 Effective Ways to Avoid Overpromising So, how do you avoid the trap of overpromising. After all, you want to sell your business as the solution. Here are a few helpful suggestions for how to avoid overpromising: Learn your customer’s expectations first. Before you begin making promises about what you can do for someone, be sure to ask about their expectations. There’s no good reason to offer lofty solutions or goals when you don’t know what’s really needed. Be completely open, honest, and transparent. As you’re talking with your customer (and with your own team), it’s very important to always be honest. One of the fastest ways to invite disaster is to keep secrets. It’s just counterproductive to hold back because it will eventually come back to bite you. Keep all communications flowing between everyone involved. Communication either solves or prevents a whole lot of misunderstandings. It’s not enough to just be honest but also, to make yourself accessible. When everyone communicates, everyone is on the same page. And, that’s an invaluable element since it paves the way to success when all parties are on-board and totally in-the-know. What other ways do you avoid overpromising? Or, what other advice would you give? Please share your thoughts and experiences by commenting! Interested in learning more about business? Then just visit Waters Business Consulting Group.

How to Keep Employees Motivated During the Holidays

How to Keep Employees Motivated during the Holidays

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How Fiat Inc. Nearly 4X’d Revenue by Mapping Every Workflow

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