Fun at Workplace

Fun all the way –Happy people, Happy Customers & Better Business Results

Dear Readers,

Couple of weeks ago, I was reading an interesting update on “Happiest and unhappiest people on Earth” in rediff updates.  This survey / poll was conducted by a Global research organization covering various countries to basically find out the how many people are really happy and unhappy.  Indonesia comes first with 51% of its citizen reporting as happy.  India and Mexico comes second with 43%.  Brazil and Turkey with 30% followed by Australia and US with 28%. (Source: Rediffmail)

I am sure you would agree with me that we all want to be happy; we want to see happy faces around and we want to be surrounded by happiness on both personal and professional side of our life.

After reading it, I was just thinking about it in the organizational context in terms of interventions that would make our workforce happy and how to increase the Happiness Quotient.  One of the important ways to engage people.

Different things motivate people and make them happy in different ways.  I thought Fun is something that everyone wants to have in life. We like humorous people and we want to be humorous. I think it’s also an effective intervention that can be rolled out on an on-going basis. It can do wonders, of course, not in the absence of certain basic expected Factors.

Fun at Workplace:

Fun at workplace is given equal importance nowadays. Many organizations provide for it on an ongoing basis for employees motivation.  Many do nurture and build a fun-filled and humorous culture.

Fun at Yahoo:

For instance, in Yahoo, they believe that fun and work are complimentary.  They look for people who take work seriously but not themselves.  Fun is, in fact, one of their values.

Fun at Southwest Airlines:

Southwest is an Organization known for its strong customer centric culture.  It is one of the pioneers that truly practices “Employees First”.  The three important components of their culture are

1) Warrior Spirit

2) Servant’s Heart and

3) Fun-LUVing Attitude. 

Fun-LUVing attitude means, according to them, “Don’t take yourself too seriously, maintain perspective (balance), celebrate successes, enjoy your work, and be a passionate Team player”

I read long time ago that South West Airlines screened 150000 employees to get 5000 employees on board.  That is a recruitment conversion ratio of 3.3%. 

This speaks volumes about the importance they give for their values (Fun being one of them) and how particular they are in getting the right people on board.  No wonder they could build and Sustain such a strong Customer centric culture.

Benefits- Fun at Workplace:

It’s my humble belief that, after seeing it in practice, it can benefit people and organization in many ways as given below.

  Ø  It is certainly an effective HR tool to build relationship and Team at workplace.  It provides an opportunity for employees to relate to each other outside the “work” context. It breaks the “Ice” and really facilitates effective understanding and interpersonal relationship at deeper levels.  It creates bonding and stronger Teams.  It’s as good as any out-bound training impact in all aspects.

  Ø  It improves supervisor-team members’ relationship.

 

  Ø  It improves the Happiness Quotient amongst people.  Like laugher, even happiness is contagious.  We can see it spreading across with one right spark.

  Ø  Though it’s unscientific, I would say, to a large extent, the participation level would also indicate the employees’ morale level.  Better the morale, more the participation.  So it is also a kind of barometer to understand the motivation levels and a tool for proactive diagnosis of team / Organizations’ health.

  Ø  With increasing amount of millennial coming to Workplace, this kind of interventions would play a big role in their motivation and be a true differentiator in talent acquisition, engagement and retention. People look for Workplaces where they can work and have FUN too.

Fun at Workplace – few workable suggestions:

For Fun at Workplace, sky is the limit and you can really go out-of-the box. I want to write about various innovative ways of doing it at Workplace. I’ve personally tried all of them and seen it be doing wonders.

     

 

Celebrations of Festivals: Ours is a country with various Festivals.  You can use them as an opportunity to introduce Fun.  For instance, you can think of events like Ethnic wear, Holi celebration, Bullock cart ride during Pongal / Makar Sankaranti etc.,

 

Bay Day Decoration: Employees, as a team, may decorate their respective bays on any given theme Great way of having Fun.  It brings everyone together to work as a team on a common goal and provides for creativity.

Star for a Day:  Select your favorite stars and come dressed up in similar ways to office as a Team.

Kids Day: Fun camp for your employees’ kids.  Lots of fun and family connect too. Simple fun games and competitions will make the kids go crazy.

In-door women’s Cricket:  You may make use of the available facilities like Pantry or roof top and organize in-door cricket with soft ball for women employees.  You can do it as a separate event / as part of women’s day celebration:

Employees’ childhood photo contest:  Collect some of your employees’ childhood photos and have a contest.  It brings lot of surprise and Fun to get to see your colleagues at their childhood days.  Sure way of building relationship and bringing people together and closer.

Humorous Day:  You may show some fun movie clippings.  What a way to make people laugh and have FUN. It makes world of difference in their energy and happiness quotient.

Tell a joke a day:  Ask your employees to put their favorite jokes in drop boxes. Pick it up on random basis and ask the employees concerned to read it in the employees gathering. Sure way to make all the employees to laugh their heart out. 

Movie day: Find out the favorite movie through a simple employee poll and screen it for all.

Pot luck: Everyone bring their home meal for sharing with all.  It can beat the best Buffet servings in the city.  Lots of fun and again brings people closer.  Whenever I organize this, I am always reminded of my school days wherein we used to share our lunch with our friends and used to feel as though we were all part of one Big Family.

Recognition programs:  You may even think of having recognition programs like “Most humorous employees” and “Most warm and friendly employees” which can serve as a positive reinforcement for employees to demonstrate these behavioral traits at Workplace. Simple and yet very effective program.

Concluding Remarks: 

Its needless to say that the organisation culture should facilitate the Business deliverable.  If Fun is part of the organisational values, Fun@workplace is a way to go and it is one of the most effective ways of building a fun-filled working environment.