Having fun outside of the office boosts productivity. Or so argues the blog Chief Happiness Officer, which suggests that companies would improve productivity by giving employees a fun day — an extra day off and a little bit of money to go do something fun. To ensure that it’s a day spent doing something fun, the employee has to file a short report on what they did.
It is a kind of truism that happy employees are more productive than unhappy ones, though it probably helps more if the employee is happy about their job. But whether a day to goof around will really work, I wonder. For starters, the blog suggests a random day off and $50 will really increase employee happiness. It won’t cause unhappiness, certainly. But $50 is barely a tank of gas these days. And I suspect many employees would prefer to have a couple of afternoons a year to go see a kid’s play or to not feel guilty for waiting for the cable guy.
By itself, a ‘fun day’ wouldn’t make people more productive, methinks. It would have to be part of a well-planned series of things designed to make employees feel good about where they work. Otherwise, they’ll spend their day off realizing just how un-fun their workplace really is.
