Episode 139: HR Tips for Work Holiday Parties

Welcome to the Workplace, a podcast by Cal Chamber. I'm Matthew Roberts, Employment Law Council and the Labor Law Helpline Manager with the California Chamber of Commerce. And folks, we're here. It's the season for closing the books on 2021, and it's that time to celebrate with our workforce all that we've accomplished this year. And of course, as it was last year, this year was a more difficult than usual year due to the pandemic and everything changing around us. And it's a good time to celebrate. And given the fact that last year in 2020, a lot of us were prevented from even celebrating due to the status of the pandemic. Many employers are really looking forward to this holiday season to start planning for those in person holiday parties. That just used to be a fundamental part of celebrating what a wonderful year we all had. I thought that with the holidays right around the corner here, that this was a good time to have a conversation about, you know, what to expect, how to prepare for and prevent any issues that you might have with holiday parties. You know, it has been a couple years since we've done this. We are still doing this within a pandemic. But I think we're all ready to get back in person and to really celebrate. So for this discussion, I am very excited to have the return of Cal Chambers own Bianca Saad to the podcast. Bianca is Cal Chambers Vice President of Labor and Employment, focusing on content, training and advice. Welcome back to the show, Bianca.

Thank you, Matt. Very happy to be here.

So I don't know about you, but I am very excited to see the return of parties and in person gatherings at the workplace. But as we both know, when it pertains to anything work related, we always have to make sure, you know, we put together a respectful and safe event in addition to the fun. Right, Bianca?

Yes, absolutely. So that's really one thing that's going to be important. You know, we're all a little bit rusty, I think, around gatherings, right? We didn't, we didn't gather last year and now we're excited to get back together. But we need to remember some of these important things to keep in mind with holiday festivities in the workplace. So, for example, one common misconception is that when employers host off site or off hour work functions that they don't need to worry about workplace, we don't need to worry about.

Harassment prevention in the workplace and we can let loose, so to speak, maybe engaging in speech or conduct that you wouldn't do if you were in your traditional work setting. And that's just not the case. Right. Those workplace harassment prevention policies, those are still going to apply to your work hosted functions. And that's really important that we remind our employees of that. That just because we might be going down the street to a restaurant or we might be gathering on the weekend when people wouldn't otherwise be working, we still need to maintain a respectful environment. And I know one of your favorite mantras, Matt, is it's not where you are, it's who you are with. And so that is something that's really important to keep in mind. Yeah.

And you know, a lot of times these issues often arise because we are in a different setting than we're at the, you know, at the facility or at the work site. And people just feel more comfortable. Right. We're more casual. It's a celebratory environment. And employees and the workforce, you know, when it becomes more loose, may lose sight of those rules, as you said. And so that's why it is really important just to keep in mind it's still work related, it's involving your employees. This is a lot of issues that we see with things like social media and electronic postings as well, is it's outside the work site, it's after hours, but, you know, it still comes back into the workplace. And so conduct at these holiday parties, of course, could come back into the workplace. And oftentimes these issues arise because alcohol served at these parties. Right. In a time before I joined the chamber, I was a workplace investigator and I actually had an investigation that involved a holiday party where somebody drank too much and got really inappropriate with everybody. And that resulted in an investigation and a lot of heartache and heartburn for the employer to have to deal with all those issues that arose at the end of the, at the end of the day. So, Bianca, why don't we talk about the role alcohol plays and can we even have it at holiday parties?

Yeah, I think that that question you ask is a great place to start. You know, can we have the alcohol served to begin with? You know, some employers may wonder, you know, they know, well, we have this, you know, drug and alcohol free workplace policy. Is it, is it acceptable that we're serving alcohol or, you know, we're allowing alcoholic drinks at work party? And the answer is yes, even if you do have that drug and alcohol free workplace, you can serve alcohol at those work parties, but you're also, you're doing so in that, in that very limited scope. Right. So it's a good idea to remind your staff, remind Your employees. This is very limited. This is a narrow exception to that policy and you're not really actually going outside of that policy. This is a very narrow circumstance. And along those lines, you have to think about the risks and the liabilities that come along with serving alcohol to begin with. Right. Like what you mentioned, if you're serving alcohol to your employees, people are going to get more relaxed, they're going to be in a different state of mind than they would be normally, which may lead to inappropriate conduct or inappropriate comments that are stated. And again, this is still work related and you're going to still have to deal with those issues. So there are some things that employers can do, of course, to prevent or limit the consumption of alcohol to begin with and of course also to address.

The prevention of any employee drunk driving. So things like, for example, maybe you have drink tickets and those drink tickets are limited in number and they're cut off at us as of a certain time. You know, if you're hosting the bar yourself, you have, you know, that, that control over, you know, how much alcohol you're going to allow people to consume. Making sure you have food served along with alcohol. Right. Obviously to help with that, plenty of water. I mean, there are a lot of things additionally to ride share services. You know, again, keeping in mind what is the location of your gathering, how are people getting there and how are people getting home? You might be, you know, you might want to chip in for each of your employees to have an Uber or a Lyft so that, you know that they can get themselves safely home. These are just some examples of things that employers can do.

Right. And I think the, you know, the sober monitors and the ride share services are really well taken points. You know, as part of that investigation that I had, one of the issues that the employer had at the end of the day was that they allowed the individuals to bring in their own alcohol. They still had monitors to make sure nobody got too crazy, so to speak. And in fact, it only did end up resulting in the one person. But one of the most interesting aspects of that investigation was the sober monitor took away the alcohol once they found that the person had, they had had enough and it was time to take it away. And so they took it away, they dumped it down the sink, said, you're done, you're cut off, you know, let's get ready to wrap things up. And they leave. And then the sober monitor comes back and there's a whole new full glass of wine on the sink again. And she's like, I have no idea how that got there. But this is just an idea and a concept that people, you know, once they start drinking, sometimes they'll have a difficulty stopping. And so if you're going to serve it, make sure that we have those monitors. Make sure that we limit them. Like you said, Bianca, you know, now with food and drink covered, let's talk about things like decor and gift exchanges and other fun activities during the party. Are there any issues that we should be aware of regarding that?

Yes, absolutely. So with the decorations, you want to make sure that you're not limiting it to any particular theme or religion. Right. And similarly, that we're not just limiting it to Christmas tree and Santa. We know that there are many other winter holidays that are celebrated during this time of year. We don't want anybody to be excluded. You can encourage employees or invite employees to bring their own types of decorations if that's something that you choose. The main thing here is that you don't want to exclude anyone's particular religious beliefs. So the religious aspect is something that you are going to want to keep in mind. Now, when we're talking about gifts, you know, if there's a gift exchange, you know, oftentimes companies will do, you know, white elephant exchange. And, you know, and this is really fun, you want to make sure that your employees, again, are mindful of your policies and that they're making these things appropriate for work. Right. So we don't have any inappropriate gag gifts, anything that, you know, has, you know, sexual connotation to it or anything that would otherwise be inappropriate or offensive. Again, this is work related, and we want to make sure that we're keeping that mindful as we're doing the gift exchange.

All right, Bianca, we've got the party planned, and I think we just need to talk about one more final issue here, and that's really about the attendance at the party. I know employers put a lot of thought and time and effort and money into these parties, and they'd like to see everybody there. And so employers really want to encourage employees to show up at these parties to help create a more festive atmosphere. Are there any concerns around attendance or requiring attendance or encouraging and maybe coercing attendance at the. The parties?

Yeah, absolutely. So one thing that happens sometimes is, you know, an employer, you know, not to be overbearing or, you know, they won't make it mandatory, right? They won't call it mandatory. They'll say, oh, attendance is voluntary. But really, truly, they. There is that expectation that employees will attend. And so one thing is important is if you're going to make it voluntary for employees to attend, that really does need to be the case. Meaning the employee isn't going to suffer any kind of negative action for failing to attend. Such as, oh well, the only way you can get your bonus is if you actually attend the party or you're going to miss out on other significant work assignments or opportunities to put that person in a better position within their role with the company. So it really does need to be voluntary. Now, some employers may actually want to make the attendance mandatory, and that's okay too. But they need to remember, though, that that time is going to be considered hours worked, and employees will need to be paid for that time. And not just paid, but also they'll need to keep in mind any overtime requirements that are triggered as a result of any extra hours.

Excellent. Well, Bianca, it was so good having you on again. I think we're all ready for our holiday parties, so thank you for joining us today.

Thank you for having me, and thank.

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