Companies at Coworking Spaces Don't Take Much Time Off for the Holidays

Staff Report

Friday, December 13th, 2019

A majority of the grinders at start-ups, tech and marketing companies across the nation plan to take only a few days off and get back to work this holiday season, according to a poll taken of companies who call one of Galvanize's six coworking communities home. 

Fifty percent of the companies surveyed aren't taking more than four days off, with 28 percent only taking one to two days off. Eighteen percent, however, plan to shut it down for more than a week this December.

"Our company honors time with family during the holidays and supports remote working and flexible time off from Christmas to New Years," said Amy Tognazzini, a senior associate at executive search firm RJR Partners, a company that utilizes the Galvanize San Francisco campus for a satellite office.

Galvanize's deep holiday dive into 105 of its community members produced some interesting holiday tidbits including: 

Although the coworking companies surveyed were overwhelming tech-related ventures, 26 percent of the companies said they will still mail out Christmas cards to their clients. However, 20 percent said they will send a nice holiday email to clients instead. Thirty-three percent of the companies who responded say they don't send anything at all to customers to mark the holiday.

More than 57 percent of the respondents will celebrate at an offsite holiday party, 19 percent will embark on a team outing and 11 percent will celebrate at work. Nearly 10 percent said they don't celebrate with coworkers at all.

"Our company, Coplex, celebrates with a fun holiday party, ugly sweater contest, and secret Santa," said Jay Beaupre, Director of Operations at venture builder company Coplex, which is located at the thriving Galvanize Phoenix campus. "We love playing holiday songs all month long!"

While most of the companies stated they would be celebrating in some way, decorating may be passé with the coworking crowd. More than 56 percent of the respondents said they won't be decorating their office or workspace at all this year, while 25 percent said they leave it to their employees to decorate their own workspace if they would like. Twelve percent decorate as a company together.

Galvanize has six coworking space campuses located in Austin, Boulder, Denver, Phoenix, San Francisco and Seattle. Two campuses, Los Angeles and New York, offer coding bootcamps, but not coworking at this time.