Questions and Answers about Fun at Work

R ecently, much has been said about "tun at work" environments and their importance for employee morale and productivity. Yet, there is no serious empirical or theoretical work on the nature or consequences of having fun in organizations. In this article we discover, through the eyes of practicing human resource managers, what a fun work environment is, its component characteristics, and its advantages for employees, work teams, and organizations. We also discover the specific types of things these human resource managers' organizations use to promote a fun work environment. Data were gathered from a national e-mail survey of human resource managers. There were 572 usable replies. The human resource managers strongly favor promoting a fun work environment because they believe such environments offer great benefits both to the individual and the organization. To them, fun working environments are here to stay, not just another passing managerial fad.