What science says about having fun at work

Research shows that loving your job improves your creative performance at work by nine percent.

Similarly, there is at most a nine percent overlap between how much you love your job and how well you perform at it. Those who love their jobs may be terrible performers, and those who are miserable at work can be among the top-performing employees.

Still, extrinsic rewards such as pay, status, and titles do nearly nothing to improve people's job performance. So, having employees who care about their job is still your best outcome.

There is a positive relationship between how much fun you have at work and how prosocial, ethical, and altruistic you are with your colleagues. So even if fun doesn't increase your performance, it increases your desire to be friendly and avoid being a toxic colleague.

Organizational programs to support fun activities seem to significantly reduce turnover, but teams led by managers who support such activities perform worse.

The key lesson for managers is if you over-optimize for fun and experiences, you may sub-optimize for performance and productivity.

Assuming we all want to work in places that are entertaining or amusing is misguided.

• Millennials and Gen Xers tend to score higher on individualistic traits, which predict more hedonistic and self-indulgent work environments.
• Extroverted and agreeable individuals desire fun workplaces.
• Excessive work involvement increases the likelihood of risking other areas of life, including family, relationships, and health, and leads to burnout.