Have Fun At Work. Are You Serious?

By 2020, 75% of the working population will be millennial. And millennials expect a fun and social work environment. Play is your key to commercial success.

I talked at a thought leadership conference recently, about culture change of course. In a break-out group after, someone commented: “It’s absurd to propose people can be playful at work.”

“Why?” I asked “Why do we imagine work as serious? Why should we tolerate rather than enjoy the thing we spend most of our lives doing? Why do we assume that work has to be a necessary drudge?”

The idea that work and play are diametrically opposed is a destructive legacy of the industrial age. It is an assumption that has to stop.

Most companies are still operating with processes, frameworks, and structures designed for the industrial revolution—for a time when factories made widgets. Back then, workers were hired to perform manual repetitive tasks and companies were machines.

Organisational systems were designed to maintain order, block creativity, and to keep the machine rolling. Distribution and communication channels were limited and controllable.

People were no more than a resource. Human resource.

Those mechanistic operating models stick with us in the 21st century, even though the industrial age is long gone.

Companies need their employees to be flexible, creative, innovative, but people continue to toil away within their silos, disconnected, with little recognition or reward, and certainly no fun. On top of that, badly handled, disconnected change initiatives are driving employee engagement and trust to an all-time low.

All things considered, it is not terribly surprising that 70% of the worldwide workforce is disengaged and demotivated.

In a world, where accelerating change is the new normal, innovation and collaboration can mean the difference between win or lose, thrive or demise. Driving behaviour change is really, really hard, but play can be a powerful tool to encourage the agile, flexible, change-friendly collaborative cultures needed to survive and thrive in the 21st century.

People are most creative, innovative, and least resistant to change when they are in the reward state. They are most engaged when they are in safe environments with people they trust.

Gamification and playfulness are crucial pieces in the toolkit that break down barriers and drive lasting transformation.

Feedback, Friends, and Fun are not Frivolous

Feedback, friends, fun are not frivolous. They are core to what makes us human … and the key to us being the best we can be.

Humans love to play. Play is the process by which we learn, and learn to deal with change.

Children are encouraged to play. Play helps them to explore and understand the world in a safe environment. They imagine, dream, role-play, scenario-plan, and bond. Anything is possible. They believe that no problem is too big to solve.

Play stimulates imagination, creativity, the ability to problem-solve … and emotional well-being. Play is not just fun. It helps kids learn to understand their world.

Then, at some point, things change. People are expected to get serious: to adopt adult behaviours.

But play is just as important for adults in a world reeling under the stress of profound and accelerating change.

Sharing laughter and fun team activities fosters empathy, compassion, trust, and intimacy with others—all massively important when traversing the chasm to culture change.

Playful behaviour boosts energy, increases vitality, and improves health. Playing helps people perform at their very best. A recent report by a research trio led by Florian Kunze found “playful design helps employees stay young at heart, which, in turn, has a big impact on company success.”

Lifelong learning is crucial in the relentlessly evolving workplace. Formal training will probably always have a place, but employers are finding peer-led, informal, contextual learning is better, and more cost effective.

The most successful companies are learning to shift from formal training to nurturing cultures of continuous learning. They are fostering cultures where curiosity, sharing, and collaboration are encouraged. They are understanding how to harness the power of play to unlock the creative power of their most expensive asset, their people.

Companies such as Squarespace, Google, Zappos, REI, and Facebook are winning because they harness the power of team activities, fun, and playfulness. Even the Bank of America is investing in the playful team building.

Gamification

Gamification can help to embed learning cultures. The meme appeared as if from nowhere at the end of 2010. Companies everywhere started applying points, badges, and league tables to everything.

Recognition and reward are super important to humans. It really doesn’t matter what the reward is. It feels good to be recognised for hard work, by peers and leaders. Points and badges (virtual or otherwise) and levelling up may seem trivial, but they can do the trick. They lead to the brain releasing those all-important pleasure chemicals.

Serotonin is triggered by, amongst other things, feeling good about the small challenges we’ve managed to overcome. A look at growing badge galleries reminds us of all the things we’ve achieved.

Dopamine, or the feel-good hormone, is released when we are rewarded for a specific action. Instantaneous feedback is powerful.

Virtual rewards are an important part of the gamification toolkit. People begin to associate ideation and learning with positive emotions, encouraging them to do it again, and again, until it becomes a habitual behaviour.

These neuro-chemicals help get people into the ideal state for ideation and collaboration.

Unfortunately, attaching points, badges, and league tables onto employees does not result in loyalty and creativity. The tools have to be deployed in the right conditions. They have to be launched with clear and ongoing leadership commitment, aligned to clearly defined business needs.

Badges, points, and league tables will not drive loyalty in cultures rife with control, politics, and distrust. The right face-to-face activities have to support a safe collaborative environment. Technology platforms can help, but they are not the solution.

Back to our friend at the conference. Why does the concept of fun in the workplace still seem like an anomaly?

Playfulness dissolves unnecessary hierarchies and formalities. Dissolving barriers and the empowerment of individuals can be challenging for command, control, and mandate leaders, for those who believe hierarchy is the very foundation of their organisation.

We are herd creatures. Resistance and negativity are contagious. They spread like wild fire across organisations. But the feel-good buzz of playfulness is similarly infectious.

Playfulness cannot be mandated. People need to feel safe to adopt new behaviours and, like any other change initiative, leaders have to teach by example. Playfulness has to start from the very top.

There are 80 million millennials in the workforce, 88% of them expect a fun and social work environment.

By 2020, 75% of the working population will be millennial. Winning and keeping the best talent will become more important and more difficult as we move into the future. Companies with playful environments will be the employers of choice of the new fickle social workforce.

I am not suggesting that companies become playgrounds, but I predict that, before too long, play will be accepted as a key to commercial success.