Linked: Lack of Fun at Work Kills Motivation
Unfortunately, too many people will read something like this and put in a new foosball table. That’s not what makes work fun!
A regression analysis suggests that a perceived lack of fun is the second-most important driver of turnover intentions, after number 1, lack of career opportunities. Moreover, the fun factor is the:
- most important driver of participants´ willingness to recommend their job
- second-most important driver of participants´ willingness to recommend their employer
- third-most important driver of participants´ willingness to recommend their supervisor
To sum up: When people do not perceive their jobs to deliver fun on regular basis, they are probably going to jump ship soon. Now, it´s clear that a job can´t be fun all the time. It´s called work, after all. But my data suggests that top managers and human resources professionals should not take this seemingly light factor too lightly.
Dr. Rose goes on to identify what it means to have fun at work, and it involves using our strengths to do interesting and meaningful work with and for people we like to work with.
I’m paraphrasing, but you can get the details below, and notice that putting in a foosball table is not mentioned.
The other thing that I find interesting here is that the “fun” work atmosphere isn’t really in the atmosphere the way we normally think of it. Those of us who work remotely, or at least outside of an office on a regular basis, can still have fun at work. (Maybe even more so since we get to focus on our interesting work without some of the common distractions.)
If you want to make sure you are cultivating a positive workplace culture, one that people want to remain in, you’d do well to remember this. Offer meaningful work that fits your employees strengths, and opportunities to do even more of that, and you’ll go a long way.
Or you could play some hipper music in the open office area where employees are free to eat free snacks, and play an occasional game without bothering to get to know their strengths or what is interesting and meaningful to them.
That might work too, right? 😉
