How the Holiday Season Impacts Types of Businesses

Many consider the holiday season the “most wonderful time of the year”, full of celebrating and spending time with the ones we love. The majority of us can sit back and relax for a much-needed break away from the work hustle and bustle. However, for some industries the holiday may be one of the busiest and most stressful times of the year. Let’s take a look at how the holiday season impacts different types of businesses.

4 main business groups we will address are small businesses, retail, charities and food industries are:

• SME (Small and medium sized enterprises): Studies have shown that 75% of all SME owners work on Christmas Day, with 5% being too busy to spend the whole of Christmas Day with their families. Along with the normal stress of running a business are worries about year-end profitability, year-end bonuses, and planning a business holiday party. Not to mention, the desire to keep employees focused and motivated at such a busy time when they would rather not be working.
• Retail: Retail is a super busy industry during the holidays, and business has increased drastically with online shopping becoming more popular. On Black Friday alone, there was a 12% rise in online spending. Online Christmas spending is projected to increase over 11.8% each year, with a whopping 51.1% rise in online orders during the week of Christmas. While the rise in retail sales is great for the economy, it requires many retail workers to work longer shifts and some being on the holiday.
• Charities: Christmas is a time for giving and this makes for a busy holiday season for charities all around the world. Studies show that 38% of people are more likely to donate in the weeks leading up to Christmas, with over half of UK households choosing to donate to charity in the month of December.
• Food Industry: The food industry requires long hours for chefs, kitchen assistants and wait staff and more than likely puts them working on Christmas Day. This makes planning time with loved ones difficult and stressful. In one year alone, a huge amount of Christmas dinners was wasted, 2 million to be more precise. This proves that while the extra business can help the industry, the amount of wasted food can also cause a big hit, in a negative way.

As we can see, the holiday season is not just a time for fellowship and celebrating, but also an opportunity for enormous growth within businesses and the economy! Let’s keep in mind that while the holidays were a fun, relaxing time for most of us there is also much added stress for others.