Creating a Fun Yet Professional Work Environment

 Are you worried your workers could be getting burnt out? Perhaps the working days are dragging and there’s a stubborn cloud of gloom over your workplace that won’t budge. It’s time to get thinking. How can you create a fun and enjoyable workplace whilst keeping it professional?
 
 To begin you will want to consider the trust levels between you and your workers as well as their trust and bonds amongst themselves. Working with friends will always be more enjoyable so it’s important that employees get every chance to bond with their co-workers. Almost 1 of 3 employees don’t trust their employers which is a huge issue since trust not only brings a good bond but also provides comfort when needing to ask for help, without trust your employee may shy away from asking for help or advice which will cause frustration and possibly low work standards.
 
 In order to build trust, you will need to ensure all employees get quality time together. One way of doing this could be weekly team lunches. This could be just ordering takeout for everyone or preparing some sort of theme to go by for food each week and getting everyone together on break to enjoy as a group. Team lunches are a fun and easy way to bring people together where all types of conversations can be brought up, not just work related which will, in turn, help everyone become more casual and friendly with each other.
 
 Another way to bring a more casual tone between workers is to have a “dress down Friday” which 25% of workers voted to be in their top 5 activities that make the workplace more fun, a study done by BrightHR and leading psychologist Professor Sir Cary Cooper. Self-expression is a key factor that helps things such as confidence, having a casual wear day may help workers feel freer to be themselves as well as be comfortable in the place they work.
 
 In this same study, 21% of workers voted that office parties or nights out were what they found to make work more fun. This is definitely a great way to get your workers closer together especially with hosting work parties since it’ll be a group project to organise and manage preparations. Nights out are just as good since it takes employees out of the work setting together so they can truly let go and be casual with one another.
 
 The third statistic from this study I’d like to suggest is that 18% of employees voted an office dog being the way to make a workplace more fun. Inc has an article on a study that found bringing a dog to work or having an office dog drastically decreased stress levels in the workplace. In this study they said the following, “The benefits go far beyond just reducing worker stress, though, Barker said. Dogs owners who were allowed to bring their dog to work reported high perceived organizational support (the feeling that one's employer cares about his or her personal and professional development).”
 
 This is unsurprising yet is a very crucial find in the study. The statistics showing that half the workers with their dogs in the office reported an increase in productivity, as well as low-stress levels, is something all employers should be looking to take advantage of if possible in their workplace. Good company culture can increase revenue by up to 4x so not only is it worthwhile for your employees’ general wellbeing but it will benefit the business as a whole.
 
 Slack wrote their own article with a few other ideas on creating a fun work environment, one topic they discussed was trading forced fun for organised fun. Big nights out and hosting parties etc are of course great strategies to increase the fun at work as well as employee socialisation, but we need to remember the little things matter just as much, there are plenty of smaller and affordable ways to make the workplace fun for all, here’s a small list of potential ideas;
 Weekly lottery syndicates
 Charity fundraising
 Yoga
 Fancy dress days
 Board games
 Out of hours clubs
 
 It’s important to remember that 1 in 3 professionals cite boredom as their main reason to leave their jobs, so it should be a top priority for managers to ensure their workspace has been made to eliminate this factor where possible.
 
 

 
 The Modern Mind Group are emotioneering human performance not engineering it.

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