Work. Say that word out loud. Go ahead, say it. What did you hear? Sounds like work, doesn’t sound fun, does it? Maybe it’s because we view it that way. What if we change our mind?
Let’s face it, most of us have to work. We have other aspects of our lives too. Maybe it’s family, art, music, electronics, volunteering, movies, athletics, faith, dining or other forms of entertainment or some combination of those activities. At any rate, these are the things we do for fun. Can we have fun at work? Of course we can, fun at work is a necessity and not an option. Here are a few ideas on how to get the work done, and have fun doing it!
- Celebrate Success – this comes with accomplishment and is critical. Celebrations take all forms and generally the nature of the celebration is relative to the accomplishment. Once, I got to enjoy a trip to Las Vegas with my teammates as a way of celebrating a year-long march to accomplish a financial goal the company was aiming for. It was incredible! We had a fun time together celebrating the milestone we had reached. Not all celebrations have to be extravagant though. In the same company, high fives were a common occurrence as we achieved small, daily wins.
- Compete – competition can surge productivity and a push one another to accomplish more than they thought they could. Competition is healthy, in most cases. Use scoreboards, countdowns or other visual cues to show how the competition is going. Consider creating teams, to encouraging friendly rivalry too.
- Laugh – tell jokes, be silly, channel the inner goofy and keep the laughter high in your workplace. Sense of humor can vary from person to person, so be cautious, you don’t want to offend anyone. Keep it clean.
- Get Out – get out of the office and experience your teammates in another environment. Maybe it’s lunch, a charity walk, karaoke or an exciting game of paintball. To encourage fun in the workplace, get out and enjoy life together.
- Listen – Talk to your staff about what they would want to do to have more fun at work. Everyone wants to have fun, so ask around for even more ideas!
While the list could go many more points deep, these are just a few ideas to get you started. They are practical and can be implemented with little effort and expense.
At Transform Consulting, we firmly believe in the correlation between a happy, healthy work life and a happy, healthy personal life. We hope this message inspires you to examine the fun factor at your workplace and take necessary steps to monitor and take action that reinforce the fun at work. Enjoy Work. Enjoy Life.
