The evidence that fun boosts the health of individual employees — and workplace performance — is overwhelming. A 2015 study from BrightHR found that “employees that have fun in the workplace, from belly laughs and birthday celebrations to Xboxes and massages, take less sick leave, work harder, and are more productive.” Additionally, Harvard Business Review reports that “Research shows that when people work with a positive mindset, performance on nearly every level — productivity, creativity, engagement — improves.”
But, how do we have fun at work when everyone is working remotely from home these days? We’ve put our brains to work and have come up with the following ways to have fun at work while working from home.
Have Fun at Work by Encouraging Employee Bonding with Remote-Only Tools
At the same time, having fun at work doesn’t have to be as deliberate as playing a game. Sometimes structured, “enforced” fun is the opposite of employees’ idea of a good time. Instead, create opportunities to connect on a human level with coworkers using the remote-only tools you are already stuck with. In other words, if your office normally plans and enjoys group happy hours, shared lunches, or other events, consider how to sustain those important rituals virtually while everyone is working from home.
Designate a channel or Slack or Google Messenger for office trivia or water cooler discussion topics (“What are you doing this weekend?”) and have people share their responses. Or, you can use a channel to play Rose/Thorn. For this game, start a group chat or channel and have everyone share his or her “Rose,” which is any positive aspect of their day that makes them feel grateful and positive, and then his or her “Thorn,” which is something that challenged them that day. Rose/Thorn is a great way to encourage mutual understanding and empathy, which might otherwise be difficult to achieve when everyone is working from home.
When the clock strikes 5 pm (extra points if you start at 4 pm) have everyone grab their favorite beverage and hang out for a cocktail hour on Google Hangouts or Zoom or whatever your workplace’s preferred virtual meeting platform is.
You’ve heard of having your pets on your video calls while working from home, but what about donkeys or llamas? Dangrooster allows you to have farm animals to your next virtual meeting and delight your teams! Head to their site, select your meeting date, and they will pair you with an animal from their North Carolina far. Or, if llamas better suit your fancy, check out Sweet Water Farms for a similar “guest celebrity” experience.
Have competitions around who can find the funniest work-appropriate video to share with everyone, and at the end of the week have a Zoom party where the winner is presented with a virtual prize.
Take a note from Liana Lewis’ team at Logic 20/20, and schedule themed team lunches on a shared calendar: “We schedule team lunches and meet up on Zoom, sometimes with themes. We make a point of taking that hour as a mental break from focusing on work, similar to what you would get if you stepped out of the office with coworkers in a normal setting. Similar to happy hours, sometimes they’ll be “vacation” themed, so people will wear a fun hat or shirt from a vacation or folks will change their virtual background to a place they’ve been or would love to go. That becomes a great conversation starter and usually carries us through the first half of lunch,” said Lewis.
Have Fun at Work with Self-Care
This may not seem overtly fun but self-care breaks can do wonders for your attitude, ease tension, and put you in a more positive frame of mind. After all, we also know that exercise promotes creativity and that activities like meditation release endorphins, the brain chemical responsible for feelings of happiness. The goal here is happiness while working from home; “having fun” is just one of several ways to achieve that goal.
Schedule short breaks throughout your day for exercise. Teams can even decide to synchronize stretch breaks and take them together. For instance, did you often take coffee breaks and walk to the Starbucks across the road with other team members before you had to work from home? Break out the Bluetooth headsets so you can do these walk-and-talks from your respective neighborhoods, as you make coffee at home or walk to a nearby coffee stand.
Practice Mindfulness. Mindfulness is the act of bringing yourself to the present moment, which also happens to be one of the 7 principles for a great collaboration. A study from Harvard Medical School Neuroscientist Sara Lazar also found that meditation and mindfulness may be key in heightening our ability to enjoy things. I’ve actually been a part of a design team that began every weekly team meeting with a guided meditation and it was fantastic!
Add in a chance to celebrate hard work with a live music performance. A 2013 study in the Journal of Positive Psychology found that people who listened to upbeat music could improve their moods and boost their happiness in just two weeks. Music2Meeting offers three different options for bringing live music performances to your teams — either immediately following a meeting, during an after-work happy hour, or as part of their Music for Team-Building facilitation offering.
Have Fun at Work By Giving Employees What They Want
Arguably the quickest way to create more fun for employees and coworkers is to ask them what they want and give it to them. Of course, you may not always be able to deliver, but just asking and trying to meet their desires can go a long way. Here are some things employees really want.
Give employees meaningful work. Employees who find work highly meaningful are 69% less likely to plan on quitting their jobs within the next 6 months and have job tenures that are 7.4 months longer on average than employees who find work lacking in meaning. Creating shared goals for projects, encouraging employees to bond and support each other, and providing employees with work that supports their professional growth are all ways to create more meaning for employees. Be intentional about making employees feel intimately connected to the greater goals and impact of their work. In our informal poll of people, the most common responses to “How are you having fun at work right now” were about people simply loving the work they are doing.
Encourage employees to try something new. Spending our time on new work — like using new processes, working in new sectors, or providing the opportunity to work with fresh clients — can create pockets of joy for employees during the era of work from home. As Doctor Alex Lickerman, Founder and CEO of ImagineMD, says, “Trying something new opens up the possibility for you to enjoy something new.” Good thing this is easily done in a pandemic that demands that we and our businesses adapt to new client needs, new employee routines, and new technology. As Rebecca Posey, a Business and Human Rights Services Program Lead at Control Union, says, the virtual nature of her client work right now has required her to learn new skills and teach them to others, leading to more innovative projects. “All these things are fun,” she said.
Planning no-meeting days to preserve time when people can take a rest from video and phone calls is another great way to rejuvenate and prime people for fun. After all, prolonged screen time has been cited to cause low mood.
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