It’s time to take fun seriously!
The success of a workplace or business should not be measured on global domination or a killer profit and loss margin. Unless of cause you are looking to get in and out quickly, build it up then sell it off retiring to your private island hidden somewhere in the Pacific. As amazing as that may sound it’s not what most of us want out of a business long term and you’d be hard pressed to find an employee that’s happy to work like a dog at making this a reality for their employer with zero personal reward.
The single most important thing for any business is keeping your staff happy. Building a high performance team who have a clear vision of what makes the company great and nurturing a culture that employees can be proud of is vital to ongoing success.
A big part of this is making work fun! Introducing a sense of play. A team that plays together stays together!
If work is always busy and unnecessarily stressful and employees are offered no escape from that then you can bet things are about to slide. Fun and positivity around the office needs to become your next priority. A lack of employee engagement will breed discontent and the negativity will spread throughout the office like the plague, employees will begin to talk, you’ll enter the team room and be met with silence…awkward!
It’s time for fun! This doesn’t mean that the employees should cease taking work seriously. Or completely throwing targets out the window, it’s just a way of loosening them up and lightening the mood.
Reasons why fun in the workplace is essential:
– Allowing fun in the work place makes (and keeps) employees happy. For example, encourage birthday celebrations and minor pranks (classic stitch-ups). This will provide temporary relief to work related stress for a while and thus allow employees to enjoy themselves. By the time they are going back to work, their moods have brightened in such a way that their productivity level actually increases.
– Employees get disgruntled with each other from time to time. That should be expected because they spend a lot of time together and they have different personalities. If these issues are not handled, the work place is going to be a nightmare with all the tension flying around. Amazing races, mock survivor days and other team outings will allow the team to identify the importance of having different personality types in the work place and teach them to be proud of the diversity in the office and to recognise the varies skills the larger team possess.
– Fun in the workplace will cause these employees to work out their issues in a good manner. If they were to handle the problems in a tense environment, the results could be disastrous.
– Fun in the workplace can be in the form of teamwork exercises or rewards for top performance. One way of looking at it is introducing aspects of competition, causing the employees to work together to win. These teamwork exercises will be extended to the workplace and the company will start doing better because the employees will start working as a team.
– At times, problems in the workplace arise because the employees don’t know each other. They don’t know what makes them tick and what makes them happy. A fun social team building outing like our Amazing Race with bars will give them an opportunity of getting to know each, people tend to act differently at work and off work. A fun team activity will allow employees to show a different side of themselves. The ability to showcase a fun social side of themselves will enhance their self-esteem.
– Creating a fun culture not only aides in the retention of staff but will help in attracting key future employees. Competitive companies have a habit of poaching employees from each other. If an employee is not satisfied at their current workplace, but then hear from your employees how awesome the culture is in your office then HR will have an inbox full of applicants.
Getting your workmates out of work to have fun is not a waste of time, it is a vital part of building your company or team. It makes them feel important and creates a sense of being valued. Is your company crying out for a culture shift? Maybe a bit of fun is just what the doctor ordered!
