Make Your Workplace More Productive By Having Some Fun
The old adage, all work and no play. You know how it goes!
No matter how serious your business is, it is important to take some time to have fun. According to Fortune magazine 81% of employees at companies ranked as “great” describe their office environments as fun.
Besides attracting and retaining employees, having a little fun has a number of other benefits; it reduces workplace isolation and low morale, it improves collaboration between teammates, breaks down entrenched hierarchies and ultimately makes the company more productive.
With summer upon us, here are six simple activities you could do with your team over the next couple of months to put some fun into your workplace:
- City Tour – Challenge your workforce to lean more about their city. If you have a large team, you can divide them into smaller groups. Give them a morning or afternoon to explore the city and report findings of interesting facts, monuments, and spaces they did not know existed. You can give out small prizes for the best hidden gems, or the most interesting finds. Treat them to a lunch or dinner, where they can share the fun with each other. Share your finds on social media, so to help promote those attractions.
- Picnic – Who doesn’t love sitting in the outdoors and nibbling on some tasty eats. Look for a picnic area that can host your workforce. Maybe you have a host of culinary geniuses on your team, in which case you could make it potluck. Or maybe someone on the team loves to b-bque in which case, you could provide the burgers and hotdogs and let them do the cooking. Consider some fun games and just take the time to relax and enjoy each other’s company.
- Charity Activities – These can be wonderful team building events that help to support your community by helping out a good cause. It is even more meaningful if they are done with organizations that mean something to you and your team. Here are some examples of things you could do; build and donate toys, visit a nursing home and spend some time with the residents, prepare food for the homeless, etc.
- Community Clean Up – If it’s a nice summer afternoon and everyone needs a bit of a pick me up, why not grab some gloves and garbage bags and do a little community clean up. You can break your team up into teams, send them in different direction and hand out treats for those that pick up the most trash. This one doesn’t take a lot of planning but can build a real sense of pride of your business in the neighborhood.
- Water Fight – Nothing beats the heat than a good old water fight. Buckets and sponges work great to contain the amount of water and gives everyone a fair chance at participating. You can ramp up the fun, by adding water guns and letting it all play out in the parking lot. Everyone is fair play when it comes to a water fight.
- Cook Off – Pick a theme for your cook off and depending on the size of your team, you can break them down into smaller groups. Allow them time to come up with their favorite variations on the dish. Provide them with a budget and let them get to work. A cook off always needs some great judges, so maybe invite a couple of customers or suppliers to be the impartial judges and make a real celebration of the dishes and the work that went into preparing them.
Summer is always a great time to incorporate a bit of fun into your workplace. Where you can, try to get outside and away from the desks and phones so that you get to enjoy each other as a team and you get to know each other better as people. Now get out there and have some fun!
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