Is Christmas Stress Making Santa and His Elves Ill?

It’s that time of the year again!  Christmas is drawing closer by the second and the party season is in full swing.  Everyone is looking forward to their holidays, giving and receiving gifts, getting stuck into the turkey and fighting over the remote control.  However for one man and his team, Christmas is the busiest time of the year.  

At the North Pole, Santa Claus and his elves were not looking forward to another year and the December workload was starting to take its toll.  As a forward thinking employer, Santa Claus brought in System Concepts’ ‘Elf and Safety specialists to investigate what was causing stress.

Using the Health and Safety Executive’s Stress Management Standards, we carried out a staff wellbeing survey, held focus groups and identified six areas that Santa’s team may be finding difficult:

• The demands of the job – The increasing world population means that more presents need to be made within an already short space of time.  Elves need to be more productive but are not given any recognition or reward for their longer hours and higher work rates.
• Control over work pace – Santa and the elves have no control over the period of time that they work.  Their busy period is always December and it is difficult to spread the workload over the year as the team don’t know what presents they need to make until they receive letters in December.   This places unrealistic demands on the elves to make gifts at short notice and also places stress on Santa’s supply chain to deliver the materials in time.
• Manager support – Santa is very supportive of his elves.  However, has a very busy job himself, so he often struggles to find time for one to one chats and resorts to doing much of his management by e-mail, causing communication issues.
• Relationships – The reindeers are feeling demotivated.  Due to increasing prices of fuel for heating the reindeer stables, Santa Claus recently told them he may have to auction Dasher and Prancer on e-bay to raise funds.
• Role – Mrs Claus has had to take on more work at the local supermarket to cover the bills.  She used to answer the letters Santa receives from children, but has had to ask Santa to do this.  Santa doesn’t know what he needs to write and nor about what stamps to use to different parts of the world.
• Change – Santa has recently automated some processes to reduce the risk of musculoskeletal disorders to the elves from manual handling.  Unfortunately they have not had time to be trained and are also concerned that new technology may put them out of a job.

After analysing the results of the staff survey, we identified that there is a high risk of stress within Santa’s workforce.  We then worked with the teams to develop some simple, cost effective actions to reduce the risk.

For instance, Santa could:

• offer vouchers instead of presents to reduce the workload of his elves
• install an automated letter answering system
• improve how he consults and involves his elves, encouraging them to help plan any changes with him during their quiet period from January to September.

One of our more radical solutions was to persuade the people in the Southern hemisphere to move Christmas to 25th June (although we recognise this is a long term aim).
 
If you would like to know more about how System Concepts helped Santa to find practical solutions to minimise the risk of work related stress (so the elves are healthy and happy and our presents are delivered on time) or would like to find out more about how we can help your organisation effectively implement the stress management standards, contact Liz Skelton, liz@system-concepts.com