International Fun at Work Day

What the day is

International Fun at Work Day is observed on January 28. A related observance falls on the first Friday of April, so organizations use whichever suits them.

Origin and background

The origin of the observance is not documented. The interesting question is why so many organized attempts at workplace fun land badly.

Research on the subject points consistently at autonomy. Enjoyment at work correlates well with employees having discretion over what they do and who they do it with, and organized fun activities frequently remove exactly that. An event scheduled by management, held during working hours, with attendance noticed, is an obligation wearing the costume of a treat. Studies of workplace fun initiatives find they can produce cynicism rather than engagement when they are imposed, and that employees distinguish sharply between fun that arises among colleagues and fun that is delivered to them.

The pattern is worse where the underlying conditions are poor. A team short of staff, or working to unreasonable deadlines, generally reads a mandatory social event as evidence that the organization would rather buy morale than fix the cause. The activity itself is not the problem; the substitution is.

What does seem to help is unglamorous. Friendship at work is a strong predictor of job satisfaction, and the conditions for it are mostly time and proximity rather than programming: unstructured overlap, shared breaks, and enough slack in the day that a conversation is not theft. Managers who protect that produce more of the thing the away day is trying to manufacture.

How to take part

• Make it optional, and make the opt-out invisible.
• Hold it in work time. Fun scheduled after hours is unpaid work with a buffet.
• Ask the team what they would actually like rather than choosing for them.
• Fix the staffing or deadline problem first if there is one. No activity covers it.
• Protect the informal time instead, which is where this happens on its own.