Lunar New Year: programming services for ERGs.

Lunar New Year is one of the largest holidays in the world. The dates — set by the lunisolar calendar — are observed across China, Vietnam, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and large diaspora communities in the US. Pew Research Center estimates roughly 24 million Asian Americans in the US, and Lunar New Year is the single biggest family holiday of the year for a large share of them. The first ERG win most companies miss is the simplest: stop defaulting to “Chinese New Year” in invites and HRIS calendars.

Inside the API category, traditions are not interchangeable. Tt — the Vietnamese new year — is its own multi-day observance with banh chung and red envelopes; Seollal in Korea centers around sebae and tteokguk; Chunjie in mainland Chinese tradition runs roughly 15 days through the Lantern Festival. Programming led by your API ERG members lands; programming sourced from a vendor with a generic dragon-dance package does not, and API employees feel the difference immediately.

The policy that actually helps is floating holidays. The two-week stretch around Lunar New Year is when many API colleagues travel internationally, and asking them to spend US PTO on the biggest holiday of their year is the same inequity Christian employees never face for Christmas. SHRM's annual benefits research has been steadily showing growth in floating-holiday policies for exactly this reason — and ERG leaders have a clean lever to push the policy conversation while planning the cultural moment.