Should a Temp be Invited to The Christmas Party?

The people2people Christmas Party is an event most of the team and I look forward to all year! It’s always fun catching up with colleagues from our interstate (and now overseas) offices and sharing stories from the year. Plus it’s a good excuse to dress up and enjoy the festivities.

However for some work places, Christmas parties can become an event of much stress and angst. Or at least, this is what I learnt this week when a couple of my temps weren’t invited to their on hire employer’s annual Christmas party. The phone calls I received which followed the revoked Christmas Party invitations included tears, anger and outrage from my temps, who had purchased dresses and anticipated that they’d be enjoying the celebrations with their permanent co-workers.

So this led me to question, should temporary staff be invited to the annual Christmas Party? As a business, we hire a temp (through one of our internal consultants, of course!) to cover the day we plan to attend our Christmas party. This is not to exclude the temporary staff member but more so to ensure our business operates as per usual and our clients/candidates have someone to speak with instead of leaving an urgent message with an answering machine. Additionally, the temporary staff member has been hired to perform work whilst our permanent staff members aren’t available. So hiring a temp makes sense for us, particularly given that the temp is with our business for a matter of hours on one day.

However, if we hired a long term temporary staff member, for example, someone who was planning to be with the business for more than 3-12 months, or someone who was brought on board for a specific project, our decision may be different and in some ways, inviting a temp to a Christmas Party may be a way of thanking the temporary staff member for their help or making sure they feel included if they are practically a permanent team member anyway.

For whatever you decide, I think it’s important to remember temp staff can be extremely valuable to a business and we are happy to help if you do decide to hire a temp to cover your Christmas Party, so everyone can attend!