In about 25 percent of holiday office parties, the majority of people leave well before the party is due to end, according to a study. View Full Caption Thinkstock

NEW YORK CITY — Seamless, an online platform for ordering food, surveyed 1,100 companies from around the country, including 130 from New York, for a look into how businesses are celebrating the end of year.

The study found that holiday party spending around the country is on the decline, with 42 percent of companies claiming to spend $25 or less on each employee.



Only half of New York City respondents — who were all office administrators in charge of corporate accounts for catering — will pay for an open bar this year. The largest percentage of New York respondents — 43 percent — said their party would take place in a restaurant or bar. New York company parties are lighter on food than the national average, with half claiming that only finger foods would be served at the office holiday fêtes in the city. Nationwide, 41 percent of office holiday party throwers serve employees a full dinner and 22 percent do a potluck meal.

In the Seamless survey, 60 percent of New York City respondents said employees considered the holiday office party the biggest event of the year and looked forward to it. However, only 32 percent reported that a large group of people stayed to the end and 25 percent held office parties that fizzled well before the party was due to end. About 15 percent of businesses held an after-party.



Andy Smith, the director of operations for co-working space the Yard, which has locations in Williamsburg, Lincoln Square, Flatiron and the Lower East Side has tweaked the company’s holiday party each year.



This time, Smith said he has zeroed in on a formula to make the event truly enjoyable for the staff who run the Yard and the 800 or so freelancers who rent desks at its four locations around the city.



There won’t be a dress-up theme like the 2013 theme of ugly holiday sweaters, which Smith said was too much effort in a busy season. The atmosphere will be casual with a live band inside the Yard’s Lower East Side location.



“I think what’s important about having an office holiday party is it allows for people to sort of clear the air in a way,” said Smith. “It’s a conclusion to the year and a refreshing start to the next.”

At the holiday work party, people who have been knotted up by a stiff professional code all year are finally given a moment to relax, be themselves and even forge stronger bonds with the people they work next to every day.

Nagela Dales, an event planner with Silver Lining Creative, which organizes holiday parties, has increasingly received requests from freelance groups or co-working spaces similar to the Yard for help with holiday office parties.

“Office parties are not only for the corporate world,” she wrote in an email to DNAinfo.

The staff at EVF Performance, a fitness organization with multiple locations around the city, will have a small holiday get-together, but the main party includes both members and staff, according to co-owner Debra Strougo Frohlich.

Like 58 percent of the survey responders, EVF Performance will have its holiday party out of the office. This year the company has booked the rooftop bar at the Empire Hotel on the Upper West Side and the dress theme is sparkles, a polar opposite to gym clothes.

“I think this year we are going to have a really solid attendance and people will stick around,” said Strougo Frolich.

“I think people really are friends,” she added.