I’ve long been a proponent of fun in the workplace. While many people associate fun with “goofing off” or “slacking”, I learned the opposite to be true at an early age. During an experience working a 30 day catering concession contract for my dad when I was in high school called the Parade of Homes, I saw that fun and productivity could actually go hand in hand and that when people are having fun, they actually have potential to be more productive.

Fun is not only one of our core values, it’s part of our philosophy at Footers and ingrained in our culture. “Love What You Do” is the first line of our Mission Statement and we believe that when people love their jobs and have fun at work, they provide a higher level of service, and they are overall happier and get more enjoyment out of life. I’ve never received great service from someone and thought, “they must really hate their job”.

A big thank you to Colbért Callen, my friend and teammate at Footers for inspiring today’s post and for sharing the following with me. About five years ago, Volkswagen ran a campaign to see if creating fun, would actually lead to people doing the “right thing” more often. Their goal was to encourage more people to drive eco-friendly cars, but they also wanted to apply their “fun theory” to other walks of life. From picking up trash and recycling to taking the stairs and rewarding people for not speeding, they created experiments and filmed them to test their theory. Their theory was correct and the results were impressive. My favorite is this video that turned stairs into a piano and they found that 66% more people took the stairs after the installation. You can watch the full video here.

What if we all strived to create more fun in our workplaces? Not with distractions that diminish productivity, but with innovative ideas that inspire people to do a great job. What if we got rid of the red tape that demoralizes our team and blocks their creativity? And instead opened the door and cleared a path for people to contribute in meaningful ways? I think we all have a spirit inside us that wants fun in our lives and as we grow into adults, that spirit gets quieted by responsibility and the need to conform.

Today, I encourage you to think about where you can have more fun in your life. If we all have more fun doing what we love to do then we can reach higher levels of potential by bringing more joy and fulfillment into our lives and the workplace.