Having fun at work can make your teams more productive — and these experts built a business around it

At many workplaces, coworker bonding looks vastly different now than it did pre-COVID-19. Even for those who have returned to the office regularly, the default ways of connecting have changed.

A prime example of that is at the fun dept. This Wilmington, Delaware-based consultancy, founded in 2006, helps companies administer team-building activities and inject fun — think trivia games, pop culture quizzes and low-key physical challenges — into meetings. Its business was 80% live events pre-pandemic, and now that’s flipped to putting on about 80% virtual events for clients, most of which are based in the Philadelphia region.

Fun dept. founder Nick Gianoulis and chief creative officer Christopher Bruce spoke with The Inquirer about the business case for having fun at work, and how business leaders can fit game play and team-building into the workplace of the future.

The interview has been condensed for brevity and clarity.

Q: Your whole business is based on making the workplace more fun, right? So what does that mean to you, and why is it necessary?

Gianoulis: As a young manager, I was charged with not just generating revenue and that kind of thing, but motivating employees. And that company had a work-hard, play-hard ethic — that was before anybody was even talking about culture. This company was having fun at work primarily with celebratory things, [such as] when we hit milestones, and the typical holiday party and summer picnic on a Saturday.

I thought geez, what if you could do things consistently throughout the course of the year … something brief during the work hours. Would that yield a better result? So that was the whole basis genesis for starting the fun dept. I just believe in my soul — it’s what I’ve been doing all these years — that people need these little restorative breaks at work and it does lead to a more productive, happier, healthier workplace.

Bruce: What fun does for companies is really important. A lot of times, we get lost in the grind and buried in our task lists, and we get burned out, we get stressed. The way that we encourage people to have fun really helps to reenergize, to refocus, and make you that much more productive. We’re not saying, “Abandon everything, so much for work, let’s just play.” It’s not about that. It’s about being able to take a step back and regain some perspective.

Q: From your viewpoint, how did workplace fun fare during the pandemic?

Bruce: With remote work and hybrid work schedules — and we’ve all been through so much over the last few years — there’s more and more of this disconnect happening. People are just sitting there staring at a screen, staring at a list of to-dos, and they need an opportunity to become connected with their teams. … There’s a huge difference when a team feels connected, when they’re bonded.

Gianoulis: We talk to clients every day [who] are saying, “Our employees feel disconnected, disengaged, they’re not attached to our culture. They’re quitting at unprecedented rates because we have people that have worked for us for two years who have never been to our office, so they’re not attached to our culture … so they just send an email and quit.” A lot of our clients who had spent a lot of money developing culture and core values … it became unglued during the pandemic.

Q: Leaders are trying to figure out what model works best now — remote, in-person or hybrid. Do you have any opinions on that?

Gianoulis: I do feel like the hybrid workplace is the right workplace. People need flexibility in their schedules. I truly believe and statistics bear it out that people are very productive at home. I’m way more productive at home than I am in the office. I go to the office to have fun with the employees. … I am not doing a lot of work when I’m there. A hybrid workplace that keeps you connected to the culture and the people is important. It’s important to have a friend at work, [and] it’s just important to engage with your peers.

Bruce: Understanding the needs of your teams and your employees is really important. Some people enjoy coming into the office. Some people prefer to get out of their space and drawing a line and having that separation. Other people really do enjoy the freedom. So I think at the end of the day, hybrid is a thing that we have to embrace. I think it’s here to stay.

Q: Among your clients who are back in the office, full-time or hybrid, have you noticed any challenges or awkwardness in that transition?

Gianoulis: The majority of the clients that we’re talking to are getting major pushback from their employees not wanting to return to the office. … A couple have actually abandoned the idea of making it mandatory. People were threatening to quit.

Bruce: I think some of the biggest challenges come from people maybe just not understanding how to adjust. Maybe they’re trying to just do it the way they used to do it. Change is inevitable, right? I mean, it’s the one thing we can count on. So we have to find ways to make those changes and to do it in a way that graceful and just understanding of the world around us.

Q: Coworker bonding in the before times often centered on birthday cake in the office, or happy hours after work. But not everyone likes to go out drinking and apparently cake in the office is bad for us. Are there other, more inclusive ways to bond?

Gianoulis: Our model is consistent, all-inclusive, nonthreatening. We design activities that everybody can play, even when it’s a mild physical challenge. We teach people to do that, too. Virtual tends to be easier that way. You also have to be politically correct … keep it clean and safe.

The things that we encourage people to do, there’s not a meal involved. And the drinking … When I was working in the corporate world, it was drinking after work, it was drinking during the day, and doing these fun activities with the company. And I was like this is fun, but I don’t want people to get hurt, you know? That’s why we decided to make things [with the fun dept.] just on company time, no drinking. We still do events where the client [is being] celebratory and there’s booze, and that’s fine, but we don’t promote it and don’t recommend it.

Bruce: We really encourage people to schedule fun on company time. After-work happy hours, weekend or evening events cut into personal time that people value. If you can just do some shorter, more consistent scheduled time while people are normally working, you’re gonna get a lot of benefits from that, and I really does recharge them. That 15 or 20 minutes makes the rest of their day, the rest of their week, the rest of their month more productive. So I would argue that those 15 or 20 minutes are well worth it.