How many of you think that your office or your working environment is monotonous and uninspiring?
And would you love to have a lively, vibrant and fun working environment?
Many great experts like Alexander Kjerulf and Teresa Amabile have been sharing how fun and happiness can increase productivity at work. And some of the reasons are happy people or happy employees have higher energy level, motivated and creative. I absolutely agree with the statements as I personally love to have fun in any working environment that I am put in.
Some may think that it is too childish to have fun at work or some may be embarrassed to play. Well, there is a great difference between child-like behaviour and childish. Child-like to me is more of a behaviour that embraces the fun and fulfilment of playing and enjoying the moment. Childish are usually the undesirable behaviour. And the little child in us wants to come out and play, and by allowing our inner child to have fun supports us to remove some of our limiting inhibitions that would in turn create creativity.
Here are some tips for you to add on into your current environment or office to stimulate better learning and productive environment along with what I call as FUN FACTOR!
1. Culture of FUN!
Make it a policy for your office environment to be a fun place to work with. The concept of fun at work promotes creativity, lowers stress level and highly likely to increase productivity because your employees, your colleagues enjoys working there.Set agreements on no judgments, that we are all here to enjoy each other’s greatness and fun while working. Agreements on balance of playing and seriousness of work, a balance of fun and delivering results. For some, fun can also be stated as a core values. Which I know for certain several of my teams and companies that I work with do have that as our core values.
2. Creating the Environment! (Visual reminder)
Post up fun pictures, happy pictures and most importantly colourful picture. Vibrant and colourful visual reminders creates a sense of liveliness in the environment. Some of the possible pictures that you can post up is mascot that represents each core values individually. For example, one of the company’s core value is loyalty, what animal would come into your mind when you think of loyalty? The image that comes to mind maybe dogs and so you can post pictures of a cartoon dog by the side of your core value. Print your core values out big along with the pictures! This will also act as your reminder for all your core values along with the associations. People tend to remember better with pictures and associations.
3. Toys Zone! (Kinesthetic experience)
Put some squeeze-able toys like squidgy balls around for you to squeeze on every now and then. Squeeze it when you are thinking or when you feel bored. Bring it in meetings. It will help stimulate your senses that may be very useful to help you stay awake and present. Have some other toys that you can find in toy shops, possibly toys that can be played with several people. Something like low powered toy guns with soft bullets around. Take it out and play with your colleagues or family every time the cheekiness seeps out. This would help to de-stress as playing most of the time lead to laughter which after about 10 minutes would produce happy hormones. Some toys that makes funny sounds helps too. Especially in a overtly quiet situation, a sudden shock of a funny sound highly like to turn into a burst of laughter.
Share with me your fun experiences at work! or after you have applied the tips above! Share with me and let’s have fun together!!!
HAPPY FUN WEEK!