Give your employees a chance to celebrate this Christmas. You can keep a lid on costs without looking like Scrooge

A recent survey found that nearly one in five companies have cancelled Christmas. Well, not exactly, but at least the seasonal office party has been scrapped. The three main reasons given are costs, costs and costs. Now, I would understand if a company had cut its workforce by between five and 10 per cent during the downturn, and decided to forgo a festive party as a mark of respect for those who had lost their jobs. That would be a sympathetic and humane response from a socially responsible employer, which had acknowledged that a company celebration of "survivors" might not be the most appropriate thing to do given the recent redundancies.

On the other hand, if an organisation had not made job cuts but had increased its workload, extended working hours and created a more intensive and demanding business culture over the past 12 months, a communal event at Christmas is likely to be much appreciated.

Many people in the workplace, particularly in the SME sector, have been working hard and tirelessly to cope with the downturn. They need some kind of reward and space to have fun after the dismal times they have experienced. As Henry David Thoreau wrote in 1853: "How prompt we are to satisfy the hunger and thirst of our bodies; how slow to satisfy the hunger and thirst of our souls."

This does not mean that an employer has to rent the O2 Arena or the City of Manchester Stadium. Any party should be held with minimal cost but great imagination. Corporate Christmas events can be organised fairly cheaply and, with the goodwill and input from employees, can be great fun at a time when happiness at work is at a premium.

First, I would suggest that employers find out whether their employees want to have a party. If yes, then ask them for suggestions on what to do, with the underlying constraint that it can't be too costly given the credit crunch and the slow growth predicted for next year. One way is to have a competition to identify the "most cost-effective party or experience", and then ask employees to vote for the one they want.

We hear a lot of HR people speak about engagement these days, so why shouldn't it apply to these types of organisational bonding and reward-orientated activities, as well as other more fundamental business strategy events? Too many senior managers think about their employees' ideas along the lines of US film tycoon Samuel Goldwyn's euphemism: "I'm willing to admit that I may not always be right, but I am never wrong." Why not let the employees decide if, and how, they want to celebrate Christmas?

We have had a difficult year. Workplace morale has been put on hold in many businesses, as people worry about their finances, job security and coping with the demand to "hang in there". We need to lighten up a bit, try to enjoy the few times in the year when the pressure, relatively speaking, is less demanding as the year begins to wind down.

We should find time to get together as individuals, as friends instead of demands, as colleagues who have been through the wars, and celebrate whatever successes have been achieved, even if in some cases it is merely a case of survival.

As Studs Terkel remarked in his acclaimed book, Working. "Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor, in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying."