‘Teams that play together, stay together’.

… this sentence was a summarised working experience of a HR manager who has worked more than 20 years in this field with large companies and more than thousand employees. Most HR managers strongly believe in this fact and the positive effect of fun and friendly culture in increasing employees engagement and motivation. Most of the employees also prefer to work in a fun friendly  workplaces rather than just formal ones with everyday boring business routine.

A fun work environment is one in which formal and informal activities occur regularly.

People like to be with colleagues who are having fun with and if the organisations can make the culture of friendship they will see its positive effect on their people. Most workers spend 35-45 hours per week with their colleagues, and it’s sometimes more than the time they would spend with their families. Colleagues who trust each other, laugh more together, lend each other a helping hand and speak more about their daily life and problems.

Do you have a best friend at work?

For years,  one of the question of Gallup’s Meta-Analysis for engagement has been “Do you have a best friend at work?” . While work friendships, as Gallup said, are linked statistically to retention or employee turnover. They’ve noted that employees with a best friend at work are:

• 43% more likely to report having received praise or recognition for their work.
• 37% more likely to report that someone at work encourages their development.
• 35% more likely to report coworker commitment to quality.

Additionally, people with work friends are less likely to accept an offer for a new job outside their company. 62% of employees with 1 to 5 work friends said they would reject a job offer; that increases to 70%  for those with 6 to 25 friends at work. Obviously, Its to a company’s advantage to help its people connect more with each other and feel embedded and loyal to the team.

Workplace friendship is especially important to the Millennials.

Friendship help them to feel active, happier and more alive at work. They want to feel socialized and connected and workplace friendship can cover these feelings too.

But on the other hand, creating  fun team activities need time and money. In ComeMit we have developed the possibility of having fun team challenges that would encourage healthier lifestyle behaviours and at the meantime friendship and communication with little or no investment. We believe that communication and friendship find its way to the motivation and engagement, so it’s worth a try.