Is Your Office Fun? Or are You Wasting Time?

Posted

Is fun a word employees often use to describe your office culture? Does your staff actually like waking up to come to work everyday?  If not, you could be wasting valuable time.  Happy employees greatly outperform unhappy employees, and the best way to keep employees happy (aside from pay increases and benefits) is to foster a fun and productive environment.

Reasons to Develop a Fun Culture at Your Office

It’s Science.
In a 2010 study conducted by Chan Ying In and Yu Hiu Ching of Hong Kong Baptist University, it was concluded that “Happy employees can help to improve productivity which make the company to survive in the market”.

While the level of happiness does impact employees, the effect of fun in the workplace has been proven to be impacted by age. In a 2009 study titled, Workplace fun: the moderating effects of generational differences, Lamm and Meeks concluded, “Generation Y has stronger positive associations between workplace fun and job satisfaction than Generation X who was born between 1961 and 1980.” This conclusion, implies millennials (employees gradually moving up in rank within the organization), value a fun workplace culture over Gen X employees.

Improves employee retention.
Many organizations have introduced fun in the workplace as way to motivate and retain employees, or even distinguish themselves from competitors.  Changing workforce dynamics by providing a more laid-back work environment can be good for both employees and their employer.  Successful companies like Southwest Airlines and Google have instilled the attitude of “the more fun the better”.  Unsurprisingly, the companies that made the Fortune “100 Best Companies to Work For” list noted a fun work environment as one of the most important elements to distinguish better employees.  A study done by Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, found that in a sample of 195 servers from a restaurant chain, fun had a favorable impact on performance and employer support for fun had a positive impact on reducing employee turnover.

Letting employees have fun creates a workplace family.
The most successful organizations have strong workplace cultures.  Employees are excited to come to work and enjoy collaborating with each other.  Make team luncheons and happy hours a regular part of your culture.  Everyone has to eat lunch, so why not eat together and get to know your coworkers in the process.  Grabbing a drink after work is also a great way to boost morale, and bring your team together around things besides work.  Due to the advances in technology, employees are able to work much longer hours from virtually anywhere, and more time is being spent at the office then at home.  In fact, according to Marketplace Business Directory, 71 percent of millennials want their coworkers to be a second family and 88% wanted their co-workers to be their friends.

While the office should not be a nine-hour long play date, it should be a place where real relationships are developed and are sincerely meaningful.  Any workplace can be fun, but it needs to start from the top.  Just be creative and make sure you’re engaging people.  

If your workplace is blah and boring, and employees are experiencing burnout, a few fresh faces may be just what you need to brighten your office.  Let the experienced recruiters at RealStreet Staffing help find you talented, fun staff.  Contact us today and we’ll provide the best staffing solutions for your organization.

After a string of failures trying to find the right person on our own, RealStreet came through for us. The first person they recommended was the person we’d been looking for all along. It doesn’t get better than that.

Joshua A. Woolley

See All Testimonials

Our Newsletter

Subscribe to our monthly emails for up-to-date industry news and insights.