Holiday Concerns in Current Business Climate

The holiday season is hectic and often stressful for employees and employers.  Wholesale supply chain issues make it hard to provide what is needed for manufacturing products or selling consumer goods. Piling on the stress for employees is schools choosing to restart on-line learning or reducing the hours on campus during the holiday season.  This forces parents to either take-off from the workplace that they recently returned to or work remotely to cover childcare and insure lessons get done.  It forces employers and their human resource departments to either do without some of their workforce or scramble to create workarounds to continue productive performance.  

New government mandates also add to this stress by telling individual and companies what they have to do and not how to pay for it without increasing the already rising inflation and the cost of doing business. "It pits government against private employers instead of working with them to create a safe working environment” says Retail Industry Leaders Association.  Employee moral and motivation may be at an all-time low with the continued restrictions, changing narrative, and perceived violation of personal rights.

These challenges make it hard for companies to take advantage of the holiday season opportunities to bolster their profits after a particularly hard past tow years.  The economy is on a downward trend making it hard for both employers and employees to look forward to a bright future.  Even though it seems hard to trust that success is around the corner, with the possibility of new "health" lockdowns as occurred in 2020, goal-setting and flexibility are very important to making the next year better for business.