January 28th is National Fun at Work Day, seriously!
How/if you celebrate this “holiday” depends on your organization and its culture. Not everyone is fortunate to work in a company like Zappos, whose core values include “Create Fun and a Little Weirdness.” Zappos knows a fun workplace can be an engaging one.
“Humor is a delightful and powerful way to open doors, minds, and hearts. Isn’t that what we and our organizations should be doing?” according to Joel Goodman. Founder of The Humor Project. Humor in the workplace is a great de-stressor and can help open communication within an organization. (For more benefits of workplace humor, check out Joel’s article “Taking Humor Seriously”.)
Have your heard this one?
In his recent post about using humor to enhance group effectiveness, Steve Davis wrote:
“When all else fails, lighten up. Injecting a little humor may be all that’s needed to lift a group out of a rut when they get stuck, help put them at ease in times of stress, make bad news easier to accept, or introduce a sensitive subject.”
Steve also shared this story about how a telecom company introduced a price increase to its employees:
“A frequent hostile question from the audience was, ‘Why are long-distance rates going up?’ One speaker gave this reply: ‘It’s sort of a good news-bad news situation. It’s true that long-distance rates are going up—that’s the bad news. The good news is the continents are drifting closer together.’”
How to have fun at work
For ideas, here are a few resources to get you started that I found online:
“25 Ideas for Building Fun into Your Work Setting” by Dr. Paul McGhee
301 Ways to Have Fun at Work by Dave Hemsath & Leslie Yerkes
Is your workplace fun?
What makes it fun? I welcome your examples …
P.S. If for some reason you miss “National Fun Day at Work” this month, there’s always “International Fun Day at Work” that’s celebrated April 1st. And don’t forget “Recess at Work Day” on June 21, 2012!