Have A “Fun at Work” Day

Are you looking for a great way to have fun at work or new ideas to add fun to an ordinary work day? Making small changes or adding different elements to a normal workday is a perfect opportunity to incorporate fun at work and lead to happy employees. This in turn can boost morale, improve productivity and attendance, and create long term growth.

Companies throughout the years have found ways to incorporate different elements to have a little fun at work. These types of work environments help to establish and improve their company culture. Below are some of the best ways to create a fun work environment using simple team building tips that will help you have fun at work while building your team. Keep in mind that these are suggestions with examples. However, we strongly encourage you to find the best strategy or activity that works for your team members to incorporate workplace fun and improve your team’s work culture.

Go to Lunch

One of the most overlooked team building activities is lunch. Really… Just a simple, out of the office lunch. Quite often, coworkers will run to get a bite to eat with each other and they will likely group together when they do. This is a great opportunity for a low key group activity that’s out of the office. Every once in a while, if you are the boss, invite yourself to the group.

“Hey are you folks going out for lunch? Mind if I tag along?” If you have never done this before, you will likely get some subtle resistance. (I mean, who wants to eat with the boss, right?) However, when you pick up the tab at the end of the meal, the whole group will be appreciative. You are likely to get to know your team on a more personal level during the meal . It is easier to communicate with your team when they like you and trust you, and food is a great conversation starter.

This may not seem like the conventional method to have fun at work, but this can foster an energetic and lively team. When you get a compliment from a client, or a project runs very efficiently, make sure to share the story behind the success. Let the whole team know how the success came about, not just the end result. Most managers think that just telling the result is good enough, but the team will only get to see the complete picture if they get access to the whole story — the story behind the numbers.

For instance, instead of “We hit our goal by the skin of our teeth. Good job, everyone,” tell the team what put us over the top. “On Thursday afternoon, we were still $25,000 under goal and only had one day to generate the last bit of revenue. John was able to go back to an order that was shipping on Friday and called the customer back to offer to double the order in exchange for a 2% discount. That was just enough to put us over the goal!”

By the way, most of the people that work for a big company do their job very well without ever knowing how their work affects the bottom-line. They are the part of the team who need most to hear about the success stories that occur at the end of the project. They will feel more of a feeling of accomplishment as they hear how their activities led to the team’s success.

One of the big mistakes that I see big companies make is that they try to re-create a team culture from another organization. For instance, a lot of high-tech companies have started providing free gourmet meals for their employees and bringing in pool tables for recreation because Google does it. Some companies may even try to add comedy to their announcements because Southwest Airlines does it. Yes, those employees have fun at work and there’s a more laid back environment. However, remember that it took years for these organizations to create their culture. If you take what works for them and insert it into a different culture, you’ll likely get a lot of resistance and confusion. Instead, start slow and build on the team culture you want in your workplace.

A good way to start is to add a fun activity. The activity doesn’t have to be anything elaborate or lengthy. It could be a goal for the group to accomplish like a sales goal or customer retention goal. Maybe you could schedule an outing where you shut down the office early on a Friday night and go to a ball game or go bowling. In reality, it doesn’t really matter how you start as long as you build on the first step of having fun at work. You can’t do something fun once and then stop. Instead, get creative and add fun activities to your culture in a step-by-step fashion.

So if you want to build a team culture and have fun at work, there are a ton of ideas that could work. You could go to lunch with your team from time to time, share success stories, and make time for play. Find the activity that matches your team culture and works for your team. If you do, you’ll begin to build your team culture.