Fun at work?
What Kind of Question Is That?
“I have fun at work.”
It’s that time of the year, folks. It’s workplace culture survey season! And, once again, I encounter this statement, which I must rate on a scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Let me say right up front that I think this question is a silly one. It’s not bad. There’s nothing amoral about it. I just think it’s silly.
I don’t know. Maybe I’d like it better if we could use Winnie the Pooh characters as options for this question. Something like:
Strongly Agree: Tigger
Agree: Pooh
Neutral: Kanga
Disagree: Owl
Strongly Disagree: Eeyore
It seems to me that this would be a better way to handle this question, but no one asked me. And, if they had, I suspect my solution would be met with an Eeyore-like response.
Clearly, I have an opinion about this statement and its inclusion in the survey, which other than this question, I have no problem with. My wife, Sue, offered an explanation yesterday that could be a reasonable way to understand this question’s inclusion. But, doggone it! I’m not writing this entry to be reasonable. I don’t like this question, and I want the world to know it.
So, the inquisitive (and reasonable) reader, like Sue, might wonder why I don’t like it. The pragmatic reader, also like Sue, may wonder why I don’t just check the Neutral response option and move on. Or, ignore it altogether.
I know what you’re thinking: Why, Ragsdale, are you devoting 1,000+ words to an objection over one survey question on a survey that you think is OK by and large? I wish I could stop reading, but now, I’m into it. I’m reading your little screed and desperately want you to get to the point for I must know why the silliness of this one survey question haunts you so!
I will happily explain.
Said silliness lies in the connection of the concepts “fun” and “work.” It assumes that fun and work belong together. That these two ideas somehow have linked arms in such a way that that linkage is now the gold standard for the workplace experience. A workplace ideal, if you will.
Let me interject here that I generally try to avoid being a curmudgeon, but not on this one. I will happily settle into my big easy chair of curmudgeonliness with a cup of coffee in my favorite mug and bloviate about the silliness of this statement until the proverbial cows come home.
Fun at work?
BAH! HUMBUG!
Now, lest I be thought to be a true Scrooge with no interest in workplace culture other than making it as bad as it possibly can be, let me remind the reader that I started the Ragstack to write primarily about joy.
I am deeply and enthusiastically committed to the experience of joy in all of life, including the workplace as some of my previous posts demonstrate. In fact, here are a couple of samples. (Joy and Optimism) (Joy-Fueled Leadership Part 3) My objection to this question, then, runs so deep because I think it directs us away from joy to some weak proxy for it; namely, fun in the workplace. And, with that question asked so early in our survey, my concern is that it casts an unintended shadow over the rest of the survey, as if fun is the goal of work. And, I just do not buy into that.
What I do buy into and what I am deeply invested in is for the workplace to be a place where people can thrive. And, thriving involves using our talents and gifts in a way that brings meaning to us as well as value to our employers.
Here are a couple of thoughts, then, about what workplace thriving involves:
Workplace thriving is less about fun and more about meaning. Is my work meaningful to me? Not just to the organization. Is it meaningful to me? Do I believe that what I do from 8 to 5 matters to me? That what I do makes me feel like I have made a contribution, not just to the lives of others, though that is truly important, but to my own sense of Subjective Well Being?
If we can’t answer that question with either an Agree or a Strongly Agree over the long-term, that should tell us something. One thing it should tell us is that we need to ask ourselves some follow up questions. Questions like:
Is it me?
Is it this place?
Do I need a change, knowing that the grass may not be greener elsewhere?
Workplace thriving also involves friendships with people at work. Am I connected to someone else at work? Do I feel heard and seen? And, do those work-related friendships make me better? Not just at my own work, but as a person? If the answer to these questions are affirmative, chances are that we are having a similar positive effect on others. That we contribute to our coworkers’ thriving. And, that is pretty cool when you think about it. It is one of those virtuous cycles we hear so much about.
When we thrive in our work, there is joy. Not the kind of hilarity of happiness that “fun at work” implies. No, this joy–this real joy–is more akin to contentment, or satisfaction, or fulfillment. And, this joy is also communal in nature. That is, it is shared across offices and relationships.
I want to be clear here. I’m not setting my expectations around this kind of workplace thriving in a way that’s unreasonable. It won’t be something that abounds 100% of the time. It’s still work after all. And, while I may not bring forth the fruit of my labor by the sweat of my brow (See Genesis 3:19), there are parts of my job that are distasteful and difficult. But, even with those parts of the gig accounted for, in the grand scheme of things, I still have the sense that I am thriving. And, that’s the sense I want people on my team to experience.
So, you can have your fun at work. I’ll take meaningful work and meaningful relationships any day.
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#joy #AsburySeminary #worksurvey #thriving
Here's a question that you might discuss in a future post: the tension between going and staying. "Do I need a change, knowing that the grass may not be greener elsewhere?" is an excellent question. It invites a dialogue between stasis and change, the familiar versus the unknown. A lot of Americans (maybe a majority) seem to often be on the "greener grass" side of things, thinking a new location or a new job (or a new car, a new home, a new church, a new spouse, a new degree) etc. is the key to some type of redemption. On the other hand, it seems true that a lot of folks stagnate in place, while others "bloom where they're planted" and become quite fulfilled and productive.
I'm guessing you would have some insights on this.
When I worked in Public Transit the fun that I had at work was mostly at lunch and break times. Some authorized parties had some fun because we did not have to work.
A wise woman of the west taught me that “work” is that which one would not volunteerily do.