Is it time to call last orders on your company’s drinking culture?

Post-work drinks. Liquid lunches. Seasonal celebrations. Drinking and work go together like gin and tonic.

As the owner of a company, your goal is to ensure the success of your business, whilst also being a responsible manager to your team. Drinking culture in the UK has long been a ‘thing’, whether it’s a fridge stocked with beer, extended (boozy) lunch breaks for birthdays, or a visit to the pub to initiate a new employee.

But as society evolves and our priorities shift – does alcohol still have a part to play in doing good business? With that in mind, here are 4 reasons why you should review your company’s attitude to alcohol. Let’s get started.

It’s not good for business

If you remove the ‘team bonding’ element from activities that involve drinking, is there any upside to allowing your team to have a drink whilst at work?

Of course, no one would actively encourage their team to crack open a beer on a Monday morning, but even on a Thursday or Friday afternoon, what are you actually achieving by allowing your team to drink?

Alcohol impairs cognitive abilities, hampers decision-making, and diminishes focus – so there are immediate downsides to allowing alcohol in the office.

If drinks in the office do turn into an evening session in the pub, you then have to contend with lateness, sick days, and hangovers, which will lead to poor work standards. Plus, there’s having to deal with the fallout from any alcohol-fueled hijinks team members may have got up to.

The well-being of your team

We know that drinking to excess has a negative impact on our physical and mental well-being, so it’s peculiar idea business owners across the country allow their teams to engage in a potentially harmful activity whilst at work.

To get the most from your team, you want them to be happy and healthy. Alcohol may temporarily allow them to blow off some steam, but ultimately it will have a detrimental effect on their health, and in the coldest possible terms, their productivity.

As a good manager, you need to invest in your people. This includes being considerate of their well-being.

Drinking is outdated

Attitudes to alcohol are shifting, with younger generations being more inclined to turn down the offer of a drink.

This means that fostering a company culture that piggybacks on alcohol, and then shouts about it via social channels, is an outdated way of thinking that could actually be doing more harm than good when it comes to recruiting new people.

It would be ridiculous to suggest that everyone now hates alcohol. Drinking still appeals to a lot of people. However, it’s not the ‘draw’ that it once was, and if you want your business to be attractive, you need to move with the times.

Inclusivity and diversity

Not drinking is a personal choice informed by many things, including religion, culture, ethics, and experience.

If your business is overly reliant on alcohol acting as a social lubricant, you’re at risk of excluding the people on your team who do not want to drink, which could lead to a fractious workforce.

Team members will start skipping events where they feel they will be pressured to drink, or worse, will give in to the pressure and end up doing something that they regret.

As the business owner, it is your responsibility to create an environment where everyone feels welcome and can actively participate in team bonding activities.

So what can you do?

The key thing you can do is assess your business’s current relationship with alcohol. Look at the potential problems that alcohol can pose to your business, highlighted in this post, and think about whether these apply to your operation. If they do, look into scaling back and implementing other ways you can cultivate a rewarding company for everyone involved.

We hope you have found this useful.

Interested in more business advice? Rapid Formations are experts in UK company formation. See their central blog page for a range of posts focusing on starting, and then running a business.

Thanks for reading.