What drives people to work during the holidays

By the end of October, David, who works at a roughly 2,000-person finance firm in New York, already knew he’d be working during the holiday season this year. Usually at the office, he learned he’d at least get to work remotely between December 26 and January 1—with the way the financial calendar fell, it was inevitable that he couldn’t just disappear for clients (like institutional investors and family offices) during that time. 

He says the schedule doesn’t really bother him.

“I’m not in a trench in the middle of a battlefield here. I’m not laying bricks,” he says. “It’s not terribly unrealistic work that they’re asking us to do.” Mainly, he’s expected to respond to emails and move forward client processes already in the works.

David (who, like other employees Fast Company spoke with, is using his first name only to avoid professional repercussions) is one of many office workers who stay on the clock during winter holidays. 

Per a 2023 CalendarLabs survey of more than 1,000 full-time U.S. employees, 24% reported planning to work on Christmas Eve, 12% on Christmas Day, and 27% on New Year’s Eve. Exclusive data from 2024 and 2025 shared with Fast Company by Stanford University economics professor Nicholas Bloom show that these figures tend to be higher for remote workers, 13.3% of whom work on Christmas Day compared to just 1.9% of those who work in person, while nearly 39% of remote employees work the day after Christmas, versus 16% who work in-office.

Many employers don’t explicitly require office workers to clock in during this Christmas through New Year’s period, at least not in a typical 9-to-5 fashion. But a few main factors drive people to do it anyway: They have time-sensitive tasks, their higher-ups continue to work so they feel the need to mirror that behavior, and, during this precarious economic time, they fear not showing up could lead to a layoff.

“The pattern I see in organizations is consistent,” says Gleb Tsipursky, CEO of the future-of-work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts. “Coverage needs do not stop, and many knowledge workers stay online in some capacity because of deadlines, client expectations, end-of-year close—or simply because they feel they will fall behind if they disconnect.”

“There’s always an expectation that you have some level of availability”

While it’s obvious why those working in retail or delivery don’t quit from late December through the new year, some knowledge workers still have time-sensitive tasks during the season.

“In litigation, things come up and you have to deal with them,” says Thomas, an attorney working at a law firm in New Jersey. Last December, he had a hearing scheduled for the day after Christmas and had to prepare on short notice. Other times, lawyers will work through the end of the year to meet billable hour requirements. Software engineers, meanwhile, may find themselves suddenly on call to put out code-based fires, and marketing professionals could face unexpected publicity nightmares. 

David, because he works with high-net-worth clients who tend to retreat to second (or third, or fourth) homes during the holidays, had been told early in his career that work gets quieter when this happens. But he’s found that the opposite plays out. 

“[That’s] when people have the most questions, because that’s when they actually read their mail or their statements,” he says. “There’s always an expectation that you have some level of availability.”

Though these time-sensitive needs are reasonable drivers for clocking in, Robert Kovach, a work psychologist who’s long advised senior executives, says working during this season is often “less about the work that needs to be done . . . it’s about [the worker’s] identity.” Working at this time of year “almost becomes a proxy for commitment, ambition, indispensability,” he says. People do it to signal that they’re reliable and valuable.

Responsiveness rewarded

Again, this usually doesn’t come down to formal office policies. The “strongest drivers” for people to work during holidays “tend to be culture signals and incentive structures,” says Tsipursky. 

Leaders “reward responsiveness,” for example, by publicly praising those who reply quickly during holidays and using phrases like “We can count on you” during performance reviews. That responsiveness can look like anything from hourly Slack check-ins to responding same day to emails.

Typically, says Kovach, bosses don’t “mandate” this, they “model” it, like by sending emails at 11 p.m. on Christmas Eve. 

Per Ryan, a software engineering manager in New York, “no one is asked to work” during this time of year at his company, “but people feel committed to their outcomes and delivery.” And even though tech companies, in his experience, “rarely set schedules for the holidays . . . outside of on-call support,” many employees still work in the competitive industry.

“The real standard becomes ‘Do not disappear,’ even if no one says that out loud,” Tsipurksy says. That can lead to anxiety-fueled holiday working, often compounded by fears of layoffs that happen all too frequently this time of year. 

“After the efficiency layoff trend that started with Twitter and Elon [Musk] and continued to wipe the industry, roles are scarce and competition has naturally increased,” says Ryan. Expectations in his industry, he adds, are high among both peers and management, and people tend to meet them by working harder and more.

Plus, there’s the added fear of “AI taking white-collar jobs,” says Kovach. “In the economic climate we’re in right now, fear is a big [driver for wanting] to be seen as being productive.” This could help explain why remote workers work more this time of year—and during holidays and weekends in general, as Bloom’s research revealed, during which remote workers’ office activity can exceed those working in person by up to 41.5 percentage points. Since they’re not literally seen by higher-ups, they spend more time making themselves seen via emails time-stamped on January 1, or slack messages that role in on December 24.

Some people enjoy holiday working: “‘Future You’ appreciates ‘Present You’”

Required or not, plenty of people like heading into the office during holidays. A friend of mine who works at a health insurance company calls it a chill time to come in. In the past, it even paved the way for her to get unique, one-on-one time with a “very high up” superior—she got to give them a solo presentation while everyone else was off.

Then there are people who don’t enjoy the holiday season. They may not have much family or they may get depressed at this time of year, so work offers a positive distraction. 

Of course, not everyone celebrates Christmas, and they may prefer saving vacation days for other occasions. Younger workers told Fast Company that they plan to have kids in the future but don’t yet, so they figured they’d put in their time during the holidays now, build up goodwill, and take vacation when their situations change down the line.

“When I take days off, I don’t know what to do with myself,” says David, so he finds himself checking his phone for office-related notifications. One of his big pros for working during holidays is that afterward, “you don’t come back to a giant hornet’s nest of things you need to do,” he says. “’Future You’ appreciates ‘Present You’ for keeping the machine moving.”

However, these pros are easier to come by in office cultures that aren’t fueled by passive-aggressive pressure. When leaders do things like schedule “optional” meetings between Christmas and New Year’s Day, set immediate post-holiday deadlines, or repeatedly send follow-ups to unanswered messages, it sends a clear message—that “silence has consequences,” Tsipursky says.

In healthier office environments, “companies set explicit expectations, plan coverage rotations, and protect true time off,” Tsipursky says. Just as leaders can model working too much over the holidays, so can they set a positive example for stepping away. “If a senior person disconnects visibly, everyone else gets permission,” Kovach says.

Ultimately, superiors can confuse being available with being valuable. Taking time off during holiday periods is often the mental reset people need to work more productively when they return. 

“What [leaders] have to be really careful about,” Kovach says, “is they’re not unconsciously equating responsiveness, or being on, with performance.”

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source https://www.fastcompany.com/91463941/what-drives-people-to-work-during-the-holidays