How much will Christmas cost your business?

When you’re in the first stages of running a start-up or SME, it can be easy to get carried away thinking of all the benefits the Christmas period will bring to your company. This can be especially true for those trading in the retail sector, where it can be assumed, sometimes naively, that the festive period will bring untold profits, and a level of brand visibility that is unrivalled for the remainder of the year.

However, Stay Sourced have put together a guide analysing the effect the run up to Christmas can have on UK businesses, with some surprising statistics. Based around research into the festive habits of UK professionals, the infographic delves into how the activities in the run up to Christmas can take their toll on company spending.

The infographic offers up some simple money saving tips. For example, HMRC offers money back on Christmas parties if the amount spent per head is under £150, but most businesses average around £183, making them liable to pick up the entirety of the bill themselves. Simple money saving tips such as this can be extremely important for the health of a business, so it’s surprising that so many UK companies appear to ignore them.

The research doesn’t only take into account monetary costs, but also the effect certain decisions can have on employee morale. Over half of people say they’d like to receive a corporate gift from their workplace, but only 22% of companies actually give gifts. We learn, perhaps surprisingly, that practicality supersedes novelty when it comes to corporate gifts to employees. Low cost, high use items like pens, calendars, and branded stress balls are all winners. You can see some of the products that employees value the most here, based on statistics from a promotional products week survey.

Another area workplaces might want to consider is Christmas downtime, which if not planned for can prove to be costly. You can view the infographic, and read more about the research over at Stay Sourced.