The Importance of Welcoming Employees to the New Year

Year-end functions are important to an organisation and its employees as they celebrate key achievements, objectives met, challenges resolved as well as individual and group efforts throughout the year. 

It is equally important to start the year by welcoming employees back to work.

The year-end season is not full of festivity for everyone.

Some go through emotional trauma such as losing loved ones, broken relationships and testing socio-economic issues.

Moreover, employees go through various events during the festive season that may cause mixed feelings and the same employees are expected to return to work the following year and be productive.

Therefore employers and leaders of organisations should take deliberate actions to prepare their workforce for the year ahead.

Welcoming employees to the new year matters and can be a great source of motivation. 

People might need to adjust to an environment where a colleague could have resigned, retired, had their services terminated, or lost loved one.

Employees are social beings and assuming that all is fine, while such vacuums exist may be costly and detrimental to the organisation.

Those who may have experienced losses or hardships need hope and courage to stand again.

SUSTAINABILITY

Welcoming employees helps them to re-align with strategic plans, goals and objectives and reminds them of their core value as an organisation.

It can also serve as a great tool of motivation because employees will feel cared for and they will create the desire to follow their leaders.
Every organisation, whether private or public, desires sustainability.

For this article, sustainability will be defined as the ability to maintain or support a process continuously over time in terms of profit, planet and people.

During this time, employees will reflect on, review and plan for the new year and be well-equipped with the necessary tools and techniques to improve and find more reasons to follow the leaders, collaborate and set new strategies on how to achieve more for the year.

Employees are aided by aligning mentally to the new year and can adapt quickly to the environment.

New employees also feel more motivated to understand its strategies.

EXPECTATIONS

Employees will be motivated to follow their leaders if the expectations of both sides are clearly outlined in terms of what, why, who, when and how to achieve such expectations.

Welcoming employees to the new year should be organised with clear objectives that will spark and jump-start employees towards productivity.

This can be done by inviting external speakers or using employees with motivational skills who will challenge the entire organisation to aspire to greater achievements.

This includes teamwork and collaboration to the benefit of the organisation with emphasis on the value of people, relationships and creating a professional bond.

This practice should also feature more in the public space such as the O/M/As – offices, ministries and agencies.

TEAMMATES

Integration and cohesion are needed between employees in various units, sections, departments, divisions and directorates to improve service delivery.

Never forget that an organisation is primarily composed of its employees.

A fitting welcome for your employees will spark the much-needed energy, drive and collaboration to achieve more.

The proof of good leadership is found in the followers and their ability to achieve more.

Acclaimed author John C Maxwell once said, “When you empower people, you are not influencing just them; you are influencing all the people they influence too. That’s impact!”

• Joshua Mario (PMP), is a motivational speaker and lecturer in Public Management at the Namibia University of Science and Technology.