Are Donations an Appropriate Holiday Gift?

Beverly Flaxington is a practice management consultant. She answers questions from advisors facing human resource issues. To submit yours, email us here.

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Dear Bev,

We are going to have an offsite toward year end when most people aren’t working. All nine of our team members want to do this. We planned to make sure it wasn’t going to interfere with travel or family plans.

We have a good agenda and I am confident this will be time well spent. We are going to do this in person at our offices, and we have a separate area where we will be away from phones and computers.

Given it is a holiday time and we are taking people away from their families, would it be appropriate to have their families join us at the end of the day for a New Year’s celebration? We’ve never done anything like this before and we have people at varying stages of life, some with small children, some with grandchildren and some with no children. Is this a good idea or a recipe for disaster?

R.I.