Who would say work was fun? Your job might be rewarding (some of the time). You may get on with your colleagues (some of them). But fun? It seems simultaneously too grand an ambition and too small.
After the work-centric “hustle culture” of the 2010s, then the backlash and widespread burnout brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, the general feeling around work right now could be described as ambivalent at best. At worst, it’s openly combative, as evinced by frequent references to the “battle” over working from home. Managers want employees back in the office; employees want flexibility, and to limit work’s impact on their lives.
Gen Z, who have replaced millennials as the youthful influence shaping the workforce, are especially adamant that it should not intrude on their boundaries. Meanwhile, AI looms, threatening large-scale unemployment.
The world of work is in flux, with a fight for our time and our livelihoods at the centre. Fun doesn’t seem to factor into it – but Bree Groff argues that it should.
Employees ask themselves, ‘Wait, do I want to change the world, or do I want to go home and cook dinner?’
An organisational consultant and “change expert” at the New York-based company SYPartners, Groff has worked with C-suite leaders – people whose job titles begin with the word “chief” – at Google, Microsoft, Hilton, Calvin Klein, Pfizer and other big names, to transform their corporate culture and improve their employees’ time at work. She has drawn on that experience for her first book, Today Was Fun, which makes the case for a new approach: what if work was neither our only source of meaning, nor a necessary evil to be endured – but a “nice way to spend our days”?
It may sound naive, but Groff’s breezy tone belies the wisdom of her point: work should be enjoyable. Too often, it is wildly out of proportion: we either “live to work”, and equate our personal worth with our productivity, our jobs with ourselves; or we’re resigned to the fact “work sucks”, and live for the weekend.
Neither view is particularly healthy, sustainable or rewarding. Today Was Fun calls for a recalibration, simultaneously raising and reducing our expectations of the space work should take up in our lives. As Groff puts it in the book, “Work should be a source of joy, because it’s fundamentally good – and it should be only one of many joys.”
‘Work is showing off our skills, working with others, figuring out challenges. That’s all fun.’ Photograph: Abraham Gonzalez Fernandez/Getty Images
Her own reckoning with work came in January 2022, when her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer; her father had already been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. An only child, Groff took immediate leave to dedicate herself to their care. When her mother died later that year, it gave Groff a new perspective on how she was spending her time, she says. “I’m going to run out of Mondays, just like my mother ran out of Mondays … there was this newfound urgency.”
At the same time, Groff was alert to the post-pandemic crisis in employee engagement, manifesting in “the Great Resignation” and “quiet quitting”, or doing the bare minimum. “I felt like I had something that I could share that would help people,” she says.
Groff knew “for a fact” that work could be fun. She grew up in Chicago, where her mother was a kindergarten teacher and her father was an elementary school principal. Both evidently loved their jobs, without letting them derail their lives or define their identities.
It was a shock, when Groff entered the working world herself, to find it weighed down by so much baggage: back-to-back meetings, no time for bathroom or meal breaks, emails at all hours and busy work with no obvious point. The trouble is not so much work itself, Groff says, but all the “patently ridiculous, if not outright dangerous” trappings and norms that come with it – chief among them the expectation that it may come at the expense of sleep, relationships or wellbeing.
We get paid to create value, not to suffer, Groff points out. “At its most essential, work is showing off our skills, creating something other people appreciate, working with others, figuring out challenges. If that’s all fun, then how can we save that part?”
One way, she suggests, is by tackling “professionalism”. It’s usually prescriptive, allowing for only one version of leadership or success, and discourages people from showing up at work as rounded human beings. “You just sort of have to play along, like you’re in some sort of performance,” Groff says.
‘Professional dress codes are dreary, rigid and infantilising.’ Photograph: Neumann Und Rodtmann/Getty Images
She appears on Zoom today with her hair still wet from the shower. In the book, she describes this as one of her small but routine displays of resistance to professional dress codes – which, she argues, are representative of an approach to work that’s unnecessarily dreary, rigid and even infantilising. “You’re just as smart in your workout gear as you would be in a blouse,” Groff says, when I confess to wearing leggings off-camera.
But, since the post-pandemic reckoning, there is a widespread feeling of fatalism that prevents us from aspiring to make work better. “We’ve normalised this idea that work is just drudgery and we do it because we have to,” says Groff.
It may reflect an overcorrection to hustle culture, born of the Silicon Valley startup boom. Tech founders and influencer-entrepreneurs taught a generation that you could achieve anything if you just leaned in and embraced the “grindset”. With company perks such as free meals, bottomless snacks and even office ball pits, it didn’t even have to be a sacrifice – work could be fun.
Groff rejects that version as being more of a bribe. “Companies want employees to have fun so they overwork and devote their lives to the business,” she says. “You start to think: ‘Wait, was that a free lunch just so that I don’t leave the building?’”
Even learning and development, often framed as a benefit, could be seen as cultivating people to be company assets, Groff says. With Apple, Meta, Google and other big companies even footing the bill for employees to freeze their eggs, “you start to enter this dystopia … The more we intertwine ourselves with our employers, the harder it is to feel a sense of independence, and the harder it is to leave.”
Indeed, since burnout became a mainstream concern, there is greater awareness that over-investment in work as a source of happiness, identity or meaning leaves people open to being exploited.
The fact is, Groff continues, C-suite executives have a greater stake in the success of their businesses, as is reflected in their paychecks. They shouldn’t expect the rest of the workforce to feel equally motivated to go above and beyond.
Think of what needs to be in place first. If you’re stressed and sleep-deprived, you’re probably not having fun
“It’s so obvious for leaders to tout that message that ‘we’re changing the world’, but it puts any employee in the position of asking themselves, ‘Wait, do I want to change the world, or do I want to go home and cook dinner?’”
The tussle over hybrid and remote working is causing trust to break down on both sides, Groff says, encouraging surveillance from management and presenteeism – showing up to work while unwell and being less productive – from employees. Lack of flexibility is also widely cited as a factor in plummeting levels of employee engagement. Gallup’s recent State of the Global Workplace report found that just one in 10 UK workers felt engaged, one of the lowest rates globally. In the US, it was nearly one in three – still a 10-year low.
Perhaps, Groff suggests, if work was more fun, there wouldn’t be the same power play over where people do their work; they may even be eager to come into the office.
Fun has repeatedly been shown to be a factor in the difference between thriving and just surviving at work. Gallup’s survey of German adults found that 81% of engaged workers reported having fun at work in the past week, compared with only 10% of those who were disengaged. “Being miserable at work can even make your life worse than having no work at all,” researchers concluded.
‘Was that a free lunch just so I don’t leave the building?’ Photograph: Tashi-Delek/Getty Images
There is a “massive” business case for making work more fun – but that’s not why we should prioritise it, Groff says. In Today Was Fun, she likens it to rest: good for productivity, “but far more important is that [it] is good for enjoying your life”.
Fun is a good metric because it’s hard to force, or fake. Instead of trying to lure workers back to the office with free lunches, employers could consider what it feels like to spend time there, says Groff. “Are people – especially the leaders – relaxed and happy and joking? Is it a fun place to be, or is everybody just in meeting rooms in their button-downs all day?”
Though Groff’s focus is primarily on office workers, everyone’s experience of work could be improved by making it more fun, she argues. “Maybe you work at the steel mill, but there’s got to be a break room somewhere.”
Even surgeons sometimes joke around. In Today Was Fun, Groff uses the example of Peter Attia, a Stanford-educated surgeon who went through a period of playing clips from the cult film Napoleon Dynamite while performing various transplants. “For an entire month … we never stopped laughing at this thing,” Attia said on his podcast, adding that, if anything, it seemed to improve patients’ outcomes.
While it’s unrealistic to expect work to be all fun, all the time, believing that “most work, most days, should be fun” can give us a helpful steer. “Did I have fun today?” can be an unexpectedly clarifying question. “Think of what needs to be in place first. If you’re stressed and sleep-deprived, you’re probably not having fun,” Groff says.
Of course, Groff acknowledges, sometimes a job is just a job, especially during an economic downturn. But even small tweaks to your role can make a difference to your day-to-day experience. “Usually, with a little bit of planning, you can make some sort of shift. I think it’s still possible for us to say, ‘What are the kinds of days I want to have?’”
Life is too short to spend five days out of every seven willing time to pass. Our ability to have fun could even prove our competitive edge against AI. Robots, after all, can’t have fun – so they can take on all the boring, repetitive or soul-sucking bits, Groff suggests, and we can find an approach to work that prioritises joy, relationships and wellbeing.
“I don’t need to feel like I’m changing the world, and I don’t want to feel crappy about it – but is there a way to have a good day, improve somebody else’s life, maybe make a friend? Maybe that’s plenty.”
As we say our goodbyes, Groff with her hair still wet and my cat joining me on camera, we both agree: today was fun.
Five ways to make work more fun
Make it more personal
Much of what’s considered “professional” isn’t actually necessary to do your job. Groff suggests doing what you can to personalise or humanise your experience. You could kit out your desk with mementoes from home or holiday, stationery that puts your stamp on your work or fidget toys that help you focus. You could express your individuality through “dopamine dressing”, wearing clothes that bring you joy. Simply avoiding the use of jargon goes a long way.
Check in with your colleagues
Our experience of work is largely shaped by our immediate colleagues. Groff suggests leaders can foster team spirit and cohesion by holding a daily check-in, where everyone shares how they are feeling on a scale of one to five – as demonstrated by a show of fingers. “It’s nice to care about how each other is doing,” she says.
Share your ‘user manuals’
Everyone likes to work in different ways. Asking your colleagues about their individual styles and preferences, and communicating your own, may alleviate the friction that prevents work from being fun and help build deeper relationships. Groff suggests team members ask each other how they respond to stress, and how their colleagues can help them, and discuss the skills they’d be eager to share or learn. You could even put together individual “user manuals”.
‘Thin-slice’ your joy
During hard times, in or out of work, it’s still possible to have a good day, hour, or even minute – what Groff calls “thin-slicing” joy. Treat yourself to a coffee before a tough meeting, go for a walk at lunchtime and take note of the blooms or greenery, or schedule a call with a colleague to vent. Even just cracking a joke can lighten the load and ease a tough day.
Go where the fun is
If, despite your best efforts, your workplace remains stubbornly un-fun, Groff suggests it may be time to move on. “You don’t need a fancy, well-reasoned argument for leaving a role … Every day you spend in a role that isn’t working for you is one of your precious and finite days on this planet.”
Today Was Fun by Bree Groff (Page Two Books, Inc., £19.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
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