June 5th, 2023 - Playful Work Design

What exactly is Playful Work Design?

• a new but growing area of scientific research (see Arnold Bakker, Yuri Scharp, Rene Proyer, Kimberley Breevaart, Wei Liu, and more)

• an enjoyable approach to improving employee engagement

• specific and unique to every team

• not just “fun and games” (in fact, the research for gamification in use cases of employee experience is trending negatively)

• significantly beneficial for organizational transformation

In a previous email, we discussed some ideas for playful work design connection questions (to replace those cringe-y ‘ice-breakers’) - some of your fellow readers suggested

• “if you had an animal sidekick, what kind of animal would it be”

• “what’s your unsolicited advice” (just be sure to avoid directed advice here - don’t give pregnancy advice if someone in the room is pregnant - and be sure to avoid controversial topics)

• and another favorite of mine is “what’s the last internet rabbit hole you fell down”?

How about some team connection activity ideas?

• in-office: get rid of the ping-pong table and replace it (or just cover it!) with LEGO bricks and elements of all types. This isn’t meant for the break room or the waiting room/lobby - be sure it’s somewhere easy for employees to access throughout the day.

• virtual: create a team-wide tradition. One example is everyone on the team wears wild socks on Thursdays. Each Thursday, everyone on the team can share a picture or description of their socks in your communication platform (like Slack, Teams, or Discord - but don’t make it an email if you can avoid it).

If you want to learn more about how those two ideas lead to increased team connection (and then increased engagement), just reply to this email or book a free 30-minute discovery call

Earlier this year, I wrote a short blog post about what PWD is and isn’t - you can read it here (it’s less than a 2-minute read!)

Thanks for reading, Subscriber First Name. If you feel so inclined to forward this to a colleague, friend, or even your boss, I’d be so grateful!

If you missed the previous newsletters, you can find them here.

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