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    301 Ways to Have Fun At Work
    301 Ways to Have Fun At Work
    301 Ways to Have Fun At Work
    Ebook263 pages2 hours

    301 Ways to Have Fun At Work

    By Dave Hemsath and Leslie Yerkes

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    The most successful organizations add a healthy dose of play into their daily or weekly routines. In fact, research has shown that when people actually enjoy their jobs they're more creative, more productive, and more committed to doing their jobs well. Companies like the Colorado Health Sciences Center and Southwest Airlines attest to the positive effect of fun at work. Both trace increased job satisfaction and decreased employee downtime to concerted efforts to make fun a part of their corporate identity.
    With 301 Ways to Have Fun at Work , Dave Hemsath and Leslie Yerkes offer a complete resource anyone can use to create a dynamic workplace that encourages and inspires fun-and-games camaraderie among employees. It combines thorough research with practical hands-on tools, and features hundreds of ideas real companies have used to lighten up the workplace.
    The authors surveyed over 1,500 individuals from organizations around the world and received enthusiastic responses that yielded a broad range of ways to spice up the work day. The suggestions in 301 Ways to Have Fun at Work include humorous training films, dress-up and dress-down days, silly job titles, awards for people who go "above and beyond the call of duty" when a coworker is on vacation, "ritual dances" at the completion of a project, a fashion show when it's time to choose a new uniform-even foam dart fights after meetings.
    Hemsath and Yerkes offer ideas for instilling an element of fun into various business functions-from office environment, to meetings, training, communication, hiring, recognition, team building, and "simple acts of fun." In addition to the fun ideas in these chapters, a series of side bars, called "fun facts," "fun quotes," and "fun resources" offer humorous and interesting facts and statements about the effects of fun on workplace performance and job satisfaction, and direct readers to useful sources for products and services to enhance workplace "funativity."
    Hemsath and Yerkes show that creating a fun atmosphere in the workplace increases productivity and morale and has a positive effect on the bottom line. Most importantly, they give readers the tools to have more fun at work, no matter where they work, or what position they're in.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBerrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
    Release dateJun 1, 1997
    ISBN9781609943066
    301 Ways to Have Fun At Work

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    • 2/5
      Not much fun to read though. Was Well organized though

    Book preview

    301 Ways to Have Fun At Work - Dave Hemsath

    301 WAYS TO HAVE FUN AT WORK

    Berrett–Koehler Publishers, Inc.

    San Francisco

    a BK Business book

    301 Ways to Have Fun at Work

    Copyright © 1997 by Dave Hemsath and Leslie Yerkes

    All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

    Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

    235 Montgomery Street, Suite 650

    San Francisco, California 94104-2916

    Tel: (415) 288-0260, Fax: (415) 362-2512

    www.bkconnection.com

    Ordering information for print editions

    Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the Special Sales Department at the Berrett-Koehler address above.

    Individual sales. Berrett-Koehler publications are available through most bookstores. They can also be ordered directly from Berrett-Koehler: Tel: (800) 929-2929; Fax: (802) 864-7626; www.bkconnection.com

    Orders for college textbook/course adoption use. Please contact Berrett-Koehler: Tel: (800) 929-2929; Fax: (802) 864-7626.

    Orders by U.S. trade bookstores and wholesalers. Please contact Ingram Publisher Services, Tel: (800) 509-4887; Fax: (800) 838-1149; E-mail: customer.service@ingrampublisherservices.com; or visit www.ingrampublisherservices.com/

    Ordering for details about electronic ordering.

    Berrett-Koehler and the BK logo are registered trademarks of Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

    First Edition

    Paperback print edition ISBN 978-1-57675-019-3

    PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-60509-269-0

    IDPF ISBN 978-1-60994-306-6

    2009-1

    Design and production Dianne Platner. Copyediting Mary Lou Sumberg.

    To fun-loving people everywhere.

    vi

    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

    Thanks to Jay Schuster who gave me the encouragement to write this book, even though he doesn’t know he did it.

    Thanks to Laura and Kristen who listen to my kooky ideas, and no thanks to Kristen for tick tocking me into doing this one.

    Thanks to Berrett-Koehler for taking a chance with us, and a special thanks to Steve and Valerie. Writing this book has been an educational experience for me; I will never look at writing and publishing in the same way again.

    Thanks to my wife, Gayle, and my boys, Michael and Derek, who have had to put up with my brutal travel schedule as well as most of my free time being spent on writing this book. You have been patient and supportive, mostly, and I appreciate it. And boys: you finally got your names in a book!

    Thanks to my business partner, Patrick, and my coworkers, Lucy, Tom, and Dana. I know that you’re laughing at me, not with me.

    And a special thanks to Kristen who has been my coach and mentor. This book wouldn’t exist if not for your help. Thanks for the ice chips.

    vii

    To the team at Berrett-Koehler Publishers for your belief in fun as important, for your willingness to be unconventional in the process of birthing this book, and in recognition of your talent. Thanks for being visionaries.

    To my partner in crime, Dave, for pursuing an idea and making fun of me even in my most insane moments. Thanks for being a catalyst.

    To Megan for believing in the book and bringing your spirit of fun into our lives. Thanks for being an architect.

    To my mother and father for your unconditional love and support, which sustains my spirit for fun. Thanks for being risk takers with me.

    To all those fun-loving individuals in workplaces across the nation who generously shared their ideas with us and now with you, the readers. Thanks for being fun.

    The secret to having fun in life is to surround yourself with fun people. My love and appreciation to all of my friends, family, and colleagues who make fun with and of me, keeping my life filled with laughter and joy, and particularly to Preston for his steadfast friendship. Thank you for being my teachers, for helping me learn how to lighten up! Why carry a heavy load through life when it isn’t necessary?

    INTRODUCTION

    viii

    Fun at work—is it an oxymoron or the newest business management trend?

    We believe that fun at work may be the single most important trait of a highly effective and successful organization; we see a direct link between fun at work and employee creativity, productivity, morale, satisfaction, and retention, as well as customer service and many other factors that determine business success.

    We wanted to help people see that link, so we decided to conduct an international survey to collect real and relevant stories of what actual businesspeople are doing to create fun workplaces. The results have been phenomenal. We received responses from individuals at many levels of the corporate hierarchy, who work within companies of all sizes and in a wide variety of industries. The responses revealed that many successful companies have made fun an integral part of their corporate culture. Fun has become an organizational strategy—a strategic weapon to achieve extraordinary results in areas of corporate life ranging from training sessions to meetings to hiring practices.

    ix

    Humor consultant and bestselling author C. W. Metcalf wrote in HR Focus (February 1993) that humor is a vital, critical element for human survival, and we often forget about it, and set it aside. We are told that laughter, fun, and play are unadult, unintelligent, and nonprofessional. Nothing could be further from the truth. One of the first indicators of the onset of most mental illness is a loss of the sense of joy in being alive.

    Fun and humor help individuals through crisis and change. Because they facilitate the release of tension, fun and humor increase employees’ ability to cope with stress on the job and to remain flexible, creative, and innovative under pressure—central features of a strong, resilient corporate culture.

    Organizations that integrate fun into work have lower levels of absenteeism, greater job satisfaction, increased productivity, and less downtime. As cited in HR Focus in February 1993:

    In the nine months that followed a workshop conducted by C. W. Metcalf at Digital Equipment Corporation in Colorado Springs, twenty middle managers increased their productivity by 15 percent and reduced their sick days by half.

    Employees from the Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver who viewed humorous training films and attended fun workshops showed a 25 percent decrease in downtime and a 60 percent increase in job satisfaction.

    Fun and the energy it creates are contagious. By far, the most intriguing part of the hundreds of surveys we received are the many stories of the ways that individuals and companies incorporate fun into the workplace.

    This book is essentially a compilation of these fun and inspiring stories.

    x

    HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

    We wrote 301 Ways to Have Fun at Work for everyone who works: from line employees to managers, from contract workers to senior executives. The book is designed so that you can open it to any page and find valuable ideas to use immediately.

    We have organized the book into seven sections to facilitate your finding a fun idea to suit your particular work situation or need. At the end of each section, we present an in-depth case study, which we call a Fun Focus, that illustrates the theme of the section. The sections are as follows:

    Work Environment: Giggle While You Work

    Communication: Funny You Should Say That

    Training: Learning the Fun-damentals

    Meetings: Having Fun—Wish You Were Here

    Recognition: Say It with Fun

    Team Building: How to Create Fun-atics

    Simple Acts of Fun

    xi

    Look for the Fun Icons throughout the book, which identify

    Fun Facts,

    Fun Resources

    and Fun Quotes.

    There are even Dave and Leslie Icons, which identify stories we are telling or retelling.

    In addition, we have included our Twelve-Step Method to Fun, a program we suggest you share with your coworkers, and follow by implementing one step a month for a year.

    At the end of the book is our list of suggested readings—books we highly recommend for your reading pleasure and to aid you in your pursuit of fun at work.

    1

    WORK ENVIRONMENT

    GIGGLE WHILE YOU WORK

    2

    WORK ENVIRONMENT

    GIGGLE WHILE YOU WORK

    that each of us makes.

    To infuse your work environment with a spirit of fun, you must value fun as important, you must believe fun to be essential

    If you want fun to seep into the fabric of your company culture, start with yourself:

    3

    make a conscious effort to lighten up,

    plan for fun,

    respond spontaneously to fun moments, and

    your work environment.

    An organization’s work environment is both tangible and intangible. It consists of the physical structure of your operation as well as the tone that is set within its walls. It might seem difficult to get a handle on the tone of your environment. It is, however, a real thing and can have tremendous impact on your work .

    n environment that fosters fun is characterized by positive energy, high self-esteem, and team spirit. People feel alive and want to give their best effort to the task. Fun contributes to the creation of an environment that nurtures and sustains what we call employee want to. You cannot put a price on want to. Individuals can be trained to do just about anything, but first they must have the motivation. Fun can enhance motivation. If work and the work environment are fun, the results will be better.

    and your quest for an enlivened workforce, we will share with you stories, facts, ideas, and resources to stimulate your fun juices for creating your own Fun Company.

    4

    Ask yourself the question each day, "Are we

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