Learning from ‘fun cultures’

Delving into her research on workplace happiness, one academic has revealed why happiness and connection levels have dropped since after the pandemic, and how creativity leads to engagement.

In a recent episode of the HR Leader Podcast, Barbara Plester (pictured), associate lecturer at the University of Auckland, explored HR leaders’ role in working with employers to ensure optimal happiness levels among employees to ensure businesses reach their objectives.

Plester has a keen interest in understanding the impact of humour and fun in the workplace. She said that this lightheartedness helps workers to get through “pretty tough times” and can provide insight into the “people side of work”.

A book about happiness

In her book, Hybrid Fun and Freedom in Flexible Work, Plester worked with companies that have “fun cultures”, placing great importance on their culture as a big part of their organisational identity.

For her book, she said that she had not planned to write about happiness, but instead thought that the book would be about fun and humour. She recalled that this new angle arose when employees at these companies talked about how their hybrid arrangements made them happy because of a “whole lot of really important factors”.

In researching for her book, Plester conducted interviews and immersed herself in the companies by doing what all the other workers did.

She said: “Some of the time I’m in the office, some of the time I’m online, I’m in their chat platforms, I’m in Slack with them or whatever platform they use. So, I’m fully immersed. It’s more of a rich, in-depth experience than a numeric quantitative one.”

Dealing with physical disconnection at work

Plester’s book focused on the social connection between colleagues and how workplaces can maintain this connection. She found that during the pandemic, the hybrid working environment allowed the gamification of social activities in the workplace for colleagues to participate in – for example, quizzes at the end of the day or a virtual scavenger hunt.

In her research, Plester found that young people led the charge in creating new ways to connect with their colleagues, using their skills as digital natives.

She said: “I saw games that had started in the office, moved online, got completely re-adapted and put into the online format where people were uploading photos of what they were doing, and it got competitive, and prizes were sent out, couriered out to people.”

Hybrid work a factor in happiness

In conversations with workers, Plester revealed that hybrid work played a big role in their happiness, “because of the freedom, the autonomy and the feeling of being trusted by their company and their manager”.

Based on her findings, Plester said people felt that they could perform better, finish a job at home, while being able to do what they needed to do in their personal lives later.

Further, she stressed that employers should give their employees a choice for social activities – keep an opt-out clause in mind for employees. “People want the freedom to choose, even [for] social [activities],” Plester said.

“While I’m optimistic, I think that can be quite hard for HR managers right now who are doing the heavy lifting when it comes to restructuring and driving workplace effectiveness right now, which is a tough place to be.”

“There were definitely limits there, and team leaders were keeping an eye on while trying to keep the flexibility as well. It’s quite a delicate balance to keep it going well from both sides of the employee equation.”

“They have my sympathy, HR managers, and I hope they keep a sense of warmth and optimism in those roles because it’s tough.”