Halloween: 6 Tips for Avoiding a Workplace Nightmare

(image from monster.com)

October 31 is one day of the year where you never know what you are going to see. Zombies, superheroes, cartoon characters, celebrity doppelgangers, witches, and ghosts roam freely from house to house all night long. But even before the sun goes down, those same costumed characters can be found in a variety of workplaces. Before deciding if and how your organization will celebrate Halloween, it is important to consider a few simple tricks (and treats) that can help your festivities run smoothly:

1. Consider the Work Environment: Are there safety concerns if costumes are worn, such as on a manufacturing line or production floor? Ensure that you are not placing your employees at risk by inadvertently creating an unsafe environment. For example, one SHRM article suggests a pumpkin painting activity as an alternative to pumpkin carving. In addition, makes sure that costumes and decorations do not violate fire codes or OSHA safety standards.
   Do your employees interact with customers? If so, consider how the image that costumed employees may portray. What might be an acceptable costume in a theater or clothing retailer may be considered unacceptable at a family restaurant or financial institution. Remember that the front-line employees represent the organization to their customers.
   Finally, does celebrating Halloween in the workplace match the culture your company is trying to cultivate? These are questions you initially need to consider when determining what celebration (if any) is appropriate in your workplace for Halloween.
2. Determine the Invite List: If you decide that a Halloween shindig is in order, determine when it will occur (during work time? after hours?), and who will be invited. Are only employees allowed, or are significant others welcome? Is it an adult-only party or are families encouraged to attend? Make sure that the party environment, entertainment, and food/drink match up with the participants invited.
3. Communicate Expectations Clearly: If employees are encouraged to dress up in costume for Halloween, ensure that everyone knows what is appropriate. A minimum qualification should be that the costumes match your typical dress code by not being offensive, revealing, or otherwise in poor taste. Costumes that poke fun at religious groups, politicians, sexual orientation, race, or that may be otherwise inappropriate should be expressly not allowed. Similarly, if families are welcome, costumes that may not be appropriate for children (scary monsters, bloody zombies, etc.) should be avoided. Office decor (if allowed) should similarly reflect good taste. In addition to ensuring that everyone knows what is appropriate, you should also lay out the consequences of not following the guidelines.
4. Offer Awards: If employees are encouraged to dress-up, offer incentives to do so by providing prizes such as best, funniest, and most creative costume. Decorating work spaces and party activities (such as Pin the Bow Tie on Mr. Bones) can also have prizes attached. Ensure that the awards, prizes, and judging are all communicated clearly to employees to encourage costumes, decorations, and other activities tailored to the awards.
5. Do Not Make Participation Mandatory: While most employees may view Halloween activities as an enjoyable diversion from day-to-day work, an excuse to dress up in costume, and/or enjoyable interactions with coworkers, it is true that the origins of Halloween may make celebrating it uncomfortable for some employees. Whatever activities are done should be voluntary. Offer to let employees work from home or leave work early with pay if they are uncomfortable with celebrating Halloween, and ensure that no harassment takes place against anyone who chooses not to participate.
6. Consider Alternatives: Even if you decide that it is not worth the headache and potential complications that can arise from employee costumes or Halloween celebrations in the office, you might consider other ways to celebrate the season. For example, families might be encouraged to bring their children into the workplace after school for trick-or-treating, you could host a company luncheon, or you could stage a Fall Festival or Harvest Celebration.

Hopefully these suggestions help you avoid the pitfalls that can occur when celebrating Halloween in the workplace. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to my own soiree . . . Argh! Where did I put my pirate hat?

Independence and Constraint

I had an interesting discussion recently with a couple of colleagues about how to foster employees' creativity. We discussed a number of things, but one of the ideas that stuck with me was the interplay of independence and constraint.

At first blush, the terms seem to be diametrically opposed. Independence is about an individual having control, while constraints allude to limitations or restrictions placed on an individual that are outside of their control. How can you have both?

But the two ideas can work together in the workplace to foster creative employees. Giving employees autonomy, or independence regarding how something gets done, is a great way to enhance intrinsic motivation and encourage employees to find the best way to do or create something. But to do or create what? There needs to be some constraint imposed that directs the behavior in the intended direction. Basically stated, there should be clearly stated goals for the employees to work toward, and clearly established boundaries regarding the resources available. When employees have clarity in their purpose and the resources available, this clarity empowers them to focus their attention on how to achieve the desired goal using those resources. Once those parameters have been clearly set, the employee is free to creatively work within those constraints. They are told what needs to be done and the tools available, but they are not told how to do it.

Maybe an example from my own life will help illustrate my point.

When I was in college, a roommate received a magnetic poetry kit - you know, the kind where each magnet is a word and you can stick them on your fridge and move them around to form all sorts of funny sentences.

(image from lessonplans.dwrl.utexas.edu)

This particular set was a genius magnetic poetry kit, or at least something very similar. It included a lot of words that the average person (like myself) would have to look up in the dictionary to understand.

My roommate challenged me to come up with a poem using only the words from that magnetic poetry kit. This gave me a clear goal (to write a poem) and clear resource boundaries  (only using words from the box), which helped instill intrinsic motivation to see what I could accomplish using what was available.

From that experience came the following poem:

Verbose

To question admonition

And every sound you see

Is to understand the mind of man

And spurn society

Above an almost salient space

I languish upon feeling base

Expunge myself as I eschew

The miscreant I make of you

How clever and curious our repose

Obscured by words no scholar knows

Time has lapsed this turgid zeal

Hence forming only her vapid will

I wrote dozens of poems in high school and have written dozens of songs as a singer/songwriter. But I think this is one of my most creative works. Why? Because of the clear goals and limited resources, along with the latitude in process, I had to think about things in a different way than I typically would when writing a poem or a song. In other words, those constraints aided my creativity by forcing me to think outside the box (or inside this specific box, in this case), while the independence allowed me the freedom to experiment and see what worked best.

- - - The Bottom Line Tip - - -

To foster creativity in your employees, try giving them a specific goal and outlining the resources available to them to achieve the desired goal. Then let them go and see what happens. The results just might surprise you.