Dive Brief:
- Having fun at work can help employees learn more, Jen Hubley Luckwaldt writes for PayScale. A joint study published in the Journal of Vocational Behavior asked 206 restaurant managers to rate the amount of fun they experienced at work to determine whether a correlation exists between fun and learning in the workplace.
- Phys.Org cites Micheal Tews, one of the researchers for the study, as saying that people are more likely to try new things in the presence of fun in the work environment.
- PayScale says that even managers can benefit from more fun in the teaching process.
Dive Insight:
When thinking of corporate learning, fun is generally the last thing on most people's minds — training can be long and boring at best. So it would seem that injecting a bit of fun into the process would be an obvious fix.
But how can employers accomplish this while maintaining strict corporate standards of seriousness? Learning modules can be broken up with games, interactions with peers and other activities that are more active than checking boxes. Leaders can lighten the mood with light-hearted (but appropriate) stories of their experiences in the industry.
Trainers can combine learning with some form of physical activity like stretching and jumping-jacks. Bringing some fun into the learning environment allows employees to absorb what they have learned and experience more joy, which will help them to recall information later on.
