Holiday Activities and Work Coincide

One in five workers (20%) say they plan to celebrate Thanksgiving with coworkers either in or out of the office this year, on par with last year (19%), according to a CareerBuilder poll of 3,600 workers.

The health care industry has the highest percentage of workers that will be spending Thanksgiving with coworkers, at 28%. This is followed by the sales industry (22%), manufacturing (21%), retail (20%) and transportation (20%).

Only 14% of workers say they plan to take off Thanksgiving week for vacation; and 22% of workers said they have to work on Thanksgiving (up from 16% last year). Leisure and hospitality workers are most likely to be working on Thanksgiving (46%), followed by retail (39%) and health care (34%). More than one-quarter (27%) of transportation workers indicated they have to work on Thanksgiving, as did 11% of sales employees.

When asked if they’d rather spend Thanksgiving Day with coworkers or family, 91% chose their family, 1% chose coworkers, and 8% would rather spend it with neither.

Another CareerBuilder survey of 3,321 full-time workers and 2,326 hiring managers and human resource professionals found half of workers say they will be spending at least some work time holiday shopping, up 3% from last year. Of this group, 42% will spend an hour or more doing so.

Forty-two percent of employees will use their personal smart phones or tablets to shop, a strong increase from last year (27%).

Twelve percent of employers say they have fired someone for holiday shopping on the Internet while at work (compared to 8% last year), and 56% say their organization blocks employees from accessing certain websites from work — up 3% from last year.