Want happy team members? Get them playing!


Employee happiness is a pretty big focus these days. Happy employees perform better and stay with the company. Today, I wanted to chat to you about play and how it can help your employees enjoy their work better. 

What is play? In this case, I’m basing it off Dr. Stuart Brown’s concept which he explains in his book “Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul.”

In its pure form, it’s something personal, something that isn’t work. Nor does it necessarily have an end goal. It’s simply something that makes you happy and gives you pure enjoyment when you’re doing it. 

And it’s such an amazing thing that can make a vital difference to a person’s mental health and wellbeing. So why not reinforce this concept at work?

Because have you ever seen a TV show or movie that depicts employees sitting in a slow and boring work environment? Everyone is so isolated, stressed and doing their tasks robotically. Who would ever want to work in a place like that?

Now imagine a workplace where employees are allowed to have fun and work in a way that incorporates a little bit of their personal play! So they’re encouraged to bring their whole selves to work. Not leaving any part behind to fit into a generic cookie-cutter work culture. 

This isn’t too far from reality now as a lot of businesses are taking up the concept of “play” and combining it into their work culture. And one of those businesses is actually The Sponge!

 

Play our strengths and have fun!

 

One of our values is “Positive Workplay” which is defined by us as “We play our strengths with energy and have fun. Smiles and happiness are warmly reciprocated and bring positive outcomes.”

The keyword for this blog post is those two words; “have fun”. And this is one of the reasons why I love working at The Sponge so much. 

At The Sponge, we work in roles that play to our strengths. I have a social media background, therefore I handle the social media marketing content! This is why I like my job because my role compliments my strengths. 

However, I love my job because my team perpetuates our positive workplay value through and through. They encourage me to have fun and even green-light small projects that allow me to incorporate a little bit of my personal play into them!

My personal play is that I’m a huge gamer, I used to play video games competitively and have basically grown up on them! I couldn’t even imagine life without them to be honest.

So the team have taken that into consideration and acknowledge that it’s a unique part of who I am (they welcome it with open arms too!). 

And they’ve encouraged  to incorporate my personal play in my job by doing things such as; suggesting for me to write a blog post showing what I do throughout the day, even detailing my gaming breaks and showing photos of my computer setup (you can check that post out here!)

They’ve also let me create a group chat with the whole team where we play games together, or against each other for a bit of friendly competition (we played EverWing for a little while!)

This has made me feel accepted and it’s also made me really love my job. We all do our serious tasks to make sure The Sponge runs smoothly like a well oiled machine. But knowing that I’m encouraged to bring some personal play every now and then to ensure I experience that play enjoyment at work is something amazing. 

 

Bring your whole self to work

 

This is why play is so important. Because it can make your employees very happy. 

And there are so many benefits to having happy employees. First, being happy can invigorate the brain. This allows for increased mental flexibility and imagination. 

Secondly, being happy in the workplace increases the employee’s drive to work because they’ll love what they do. This increases productivity because their focus has improved due to their work being associated with a positive emotion. 

Plus, employees are likely to take less days off because they’ll actually want to be there! 

Also if you’ve got customer service, you bet that happier customer service reps will let that joy shine through everything they do, resulting in better communication and happier customers. 

And it’s as simple as encouraging them to incorporate some personal play when appropriate. For example, you could let animal lovers attach pictures of their pet to email chains, or bring in a board game for tabletop enthusiasts. The possibilities are endless and will be as unique as your employees. 

 

So, are you ready to play?

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Humbling Words From Awesome People

  • The Sponge is enabling small business to focus on essential elements of marketing/strategy. I used to go in circles and best guess engagement with customers; I didn’t understand my target market. The Sponge gave me a real wake-up call: To realise how much time and money I was throwing away for no return. The learning was interesting and interactive. Now, I feel in control and focused.

    Sue Lea Timely Business Solutions
  • We were in the middle of re-branding and wanted to know how better to market our product including how better to tell our story. This webinar provided practical marketing techniques, and rationale to explain the benefit of this strategy. The 'light bulb' moment for me was making the connection between the power of storytelling and marketing our brand.

    Susan Perry CEO CommunityGro
  • Branding is a familiar concept to comms & marketing professionals like myself. But it’s often a mystery to other staff, and for brand to be authentic, unique and indispensable they all need to be on board. This training helped me clarify branding to everyone in our organisation. Now they’re all part of the brand redevelopment crew, identifying and sharing stories that resonate with our values and purpose. Thanks, Luke, for launching our journey to uncover the brand that ‘comes from within’.

    Avril Janks Communications and Marketing Coordinator
  • The Sponge’s perceptive sensibility guarantees a perfect match between your business and its presentation to the world. They makes your values, ethics, goals, and the 'feel' of your business shine through every aspect of your brand.

    Geoff Walker Sydney Massage Time Pty Ltd
  • I recommend The Sponge’s services to new and established organizations who are looking to differentiate themselves from the “ordinary” and stand out from the crowd.

    Annette Wright InfoGenesis Pty Limited
  • One of Luke’s talents is his ability to move people and organizations from the creative to the innovative, commercializing ideas and inventions.

    Rodney Marks Hoax Speaker
  • I have had The Sponge involved in several IT based projects over my years working as a Software Developer. Each project has seen results that have exceeded expectations and I highly recommend them.

    Shane Wisniewski Wesfarmers Industrial and Safety
  • I usually don’t believe in one stop shops, because of the inability to be great across many areas, but The Sponge truly are the one stop shop for brand creation, innovation and lead generation.

    Mark Capelin Tribe Social Fitness
  • Luke and the crew at the Sponge helped set up our Corporate image as it stands today. They were extremely helpful and patient. They took the time to understand our business and brainstormed with us some of the essential elements and came up with various images until we were happy with the final one. Can't recommend Luke and his team enough. Thanks again Luke.

    Kim Lie Jom Complete Health Chiropractic
  • The Sponge team are great to work with. They translate your ideas and vision into something real and tangible and they truly want to make an impact to your business strategy with their valuable insights. We have been using them for over 10 years and would highly recommend their expertise.

    M Levonian William, Thyme & Prophet / Report Factory
  • A great vibe and energy brought to every project that The Sponge have led for me. Easy to work with, quick on the uptake of direction and prompt service. Will definitely be using The Sponge again and highly recommend.

    Lucette King NSW Department of Education
  • High level strategic thinking and their creativity makes them stand out. Quick turn around time and reasonable price make them the winner every single time.

    Syed Mujtuba Crescent Wealth
  • Awesome company with awesome creativity. After working with them over 2 years, The Sponge has successfully turned me from a happy customer into a raving fan!

    Jeremy Chen Claytan Australia
  • Great creative proactive company. Could not be happier with the works they both provided and suggested. Now our go to company for branding.

    Ross Thompson JHA Engineers
  • Awesome design. Easy to work with. Jobs are completed quickly. Highly recommended.

    Alexander Bont BONT
  • Luke and the team at the Sponge are truly artisans of their craft. They're AWARE, they DARE and DELIVER.

    Claude Di Ciano Richardson & Wrench Willoughby
  • Love their vision, love their work and mostly love the team!

    C. S. Chen Claytan Australia
  • The Sponge truly immersed themselves into our business, our team and our culture to develop a brand that not only captured our essence but more importantly; expressed it to the world.

    Mende Seljanovski Enth° Projects
  • The Sponge have been outstanding to work with. Their expertise, dedication and outstanding quality of work is second to none. I am grateful for their input into the design of our brand and website.

    Matt Malouf The Fortune Institute
  • Our brand looks better than we could have dreamed and The Sponge team managed to squeeze so much meaning into it that our prospects really get a sense of how we can help them.

    Darren Vardy Insolvency Options

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