Holiday season is a happy time. Holiday season can also be a hard time, especially for retail workers. An engaging workplace can work wonders for employee motivation, customer satisfaction and stress reduction. Sound pretty positive ingredients for any retail business this time of year. Here are 3 ways to up your employees' engagement and down their stress during the holiday season.

• Invite their creativity. Holiday season is a perfect opportunity for all kinds of creativity: songs, costumes, decorations, gift cards, and more. In a this-is-not-a-requirement way, invite your people to be as creative as they wish to increase their energy and engagement, to engage your customers, and to reduce holiday stress. How about a Christmas Character Costume day? Why not write your store's version of several holiday songs.

• Open up to diversity. As mentioned yesterday attention to the several holidays gives a much larger segment of your employee (and customer) base cause for engagement. Information about Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa is readily available.  Why not have employees suggest (even design?) promotions and gift cards that are "theme'd" around all three holidays?

• Put your engagement on display. Employees look first to their managers and supervisors to know what engagement looks like. They also take cues from managers as to what (how much) fun is acceptable. Consider all the ways you (and your fellow managers) can demonstrate that fun. Coming to work dressed as Santa Claus is only one way. And pretty much overused. Other ideas?

Tomorrow I'll participate in the PeopleCube webinar on Alternative Workspace Environments. And as soon as it's over, I'll report on its employee engagement potential!