From abcnews.com – How to Have More Fun at Work. This topic is going to become more common as Gen X ascends and Gen Y populates the workforce. Already we are seeing numerous articles on work/life balance enter the article sphere.
I’ve worked for many Boomer managers who were suit-and-tie, get your work done leaders with no time for, well, fun at the office. At one technology employer, we had a dartboard and ping pong table in the lunchroom that was a huge hit. In the sales department, we would take a 15 minute afternoon break to go trash-talk each other while competing like we were in the Olympics. To this day, I remember how enjoyable those competitions were. Afterwards, we would get back to work almost invigorated from the mini battle.
Now for a strange aside. When my son was in preschool years ago, the teacher explained that children learn better when they have large-muscle activity before a seated learning time. I don’t know if that is true of adults or not, but as I mentioned, I always felt invigorated after a game of ping pong. I had more energy and was more “alive” on my phone calls.
Yet there is a downside to offering this type of fun at the office. The word came down from the Boomer management team that salespeople should not be playing ping pong at any time during the day. Mind you, no other departments received a similar dictate, just sales. After that, every time we went to get a coffee or snack, we would see others enjoying a part of the corporate culture that was forbidden to us. That rule created much angst and resentment between the sales team and the managers.
My point is simple, if you are going to commit to a culture of fun, make sure you set parameters at the beginning and make it accessible to all employees. And remember, the opportunity for employees to have some fun will go miles to improving morale and hopefully retention.