Wow. I can't believe another year is in the books. With the holidays in full swing, I'm sure many of you have been intimately involved in your organization's holiday planning. I was reading this month's edition of HR Magazine and there was a short article by Susan Milligan on including your remote workers in your annual holiday celebrations that caught my eye.

She has some great suggestions including leveraging tools like Skype or WebEx to include your remote employees in festivities or paying for them to travel to HQ for parties. She also suggests personalized gifts and notes that let your remote employees know you really value their contributions to the team.

As a consultant, all of my team members are remote some as far as Texas and California. The holiday season is a difficult time to pull them all together, so at the very least, I make sure that I stop, reflect and thank them for their contributions and value to the firm.

However, Susan's article got me thinking about the importance of taking steps to be inclusive of remote workers throughout the year, not just around the holidays. I believe we should do so because of the value these employees contribute to our organization, but perhaps more importantly, there is a growing trend towards a remote workforce model. 

In fact, Fortune predicts that next year a Fortune 100 company will take this leap to have a completely remote workforce. Will this be your company in the coming year? Perhaps beginning to build more robust remote workforce plans now, finding out what works, what doesn't, can possibly benefit you in the future.

So from all of us here at HR Advisors Group, Happy Holidays! Enjoy the season and we're looking forward to great things in the New Year.