The adult self who still needs to play

It’s reasonable to think that, in the workplace, the concept of fun isn’t necessarily among the first things workers think about. That’s why, in our survey, we asked them directly what they thought about it — or at least what other concepts and contexts they would associate it with.

We discussed the results with Mindwork Scientific Director Biancamaria Cavallini, who deals with psychological well-being at work, a theme potentially connected to fun within corporate contexts.

Although the bridges between work and fun are anything but obvious (or natural), the professional world is beginning to change from that perspective as well, offering perspectives worth investigating — and on which, perhaps, companies will increasingly need to focus.

** The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. **

MAIZE: What were the turning points of your journey? The ones that made you think it would be interesting to focus on well-being?

BC: The first sliding door moment was during my psychology bachelor’s, as I was convinced I wanted to be a psychotherapist. Then I encountered social psychology and realized there was a world beyond psychotherapy; and from there, shortly after, work psychology, through which I understood that I was primarily interested in understanding how people behave in workplaces, why they behave the way they do, and the elements that contribute to their well-being.

But I didn’t take the well-being path right away. When I graduated it was barely talked about, and these were more my own reflections, if you will. So I started working in corporate training. What has always driven me is the desire to bring greater awareness to psychology-related topics. In some way, I’ve always seen training as a promoter of well-being; then in 2020, when people started talking about well-being a bit more — and especially at work — my path crossed with Mindwork’s, and from there I started working concretely and vertically on the theme.

MAIZE: What are the main challenges?

BC: During the first phase of the pandemic, despite being perceived as urgent, the topic of well-being was still heavily stigmatized. However, Mindwork’s commitment and mine as a professional have always been oriented toward positioning mental health at work specifically as well-being, in a positive lens; not because we want to ignore distress, but because we can talk about well-being in a more inclusive way, one that allows people to feel recognized regardless of whether they’re doing well or poorly at a given moment in life.

And so if at the beginning the big obstacle was somehow making companies — and HRs first and foremost — understand that the topic wasn’t just related to the current emergency but one they could invest in the longer term, today the biggest obstacle is perhaps the fact that everyone does talk about it, and more companies have psychological support services — but there is, paradoxically, less awareness. It’s talked about a lot, yes: but it all depends on the how, the quality of the services being offered. There’s a risk of trivializing a highly complex subject, sometimes treated in an excessively simplistic way. The challenge today is making people understand the three-dimensionality of the issue.

MAIZE: Let’s move on from well-being to fun. How do you perceive it when linked to the work world? Is it an integral part of it, or something to invest in only after other priorities?

BC: From my experience, I can say that we haven’t even gotten to the point of asking ourselves the question. Typically, associating fun with work is still complex because we believe that work and fun are different things, that you don’t have fun at work. We’re much more used to hearing conversations where people talk about how stressed they are, or how bored, how bad they feel and how much they struggle. This happens for many reasons that it’s proper and necessary to address.

On the other hand, however, it’s as if we had collectively removed the idea that work is also a source of personal fulfillment. We achieve personal fulfillment when we feel involved in what we do. And we feel involved when what we do motivates us, intrigues us, and therefore entertains us. We certainly need to take some logical steps to bridge ourselves closer to the idea of fun when thinking about work. But if we do imagine it as the direct consequence of an activity in which we are involved and motivated, getting there becomes much more straightforward, and we understand how important it is for results too.

There are three main aspects to it. The first is doing things willingly. The second word that comes to mind – perhaps a tad romantic – is smile, in the sense that when we think about having fun, we think of laughter and smiling – although that’s sometimes difficult at work since jokes and humor are socially accepted only up to a certain point, and there’s the risk that if you’re having too much fun it might look like you’re not even working. Personally, I feel fortunate to have colleagues with whom this is possible, and in fact, I have a lot of fun doing what I do.

The third element is the experience of flow, i.e. being fully focused on what we’re doing. Submerged in that “optimal experience” in which external stimuli are almost nullified, we don’t perceive them nearly at all. Time starts to pass differently.

Indeed, this happens at work, too. And although the first studies on flow did take place in informal settings, researchers quickly realized that it was much easier to activate flow in the work environment; one of the reasons being that you need to have a very clear goal [to enter the flow]. Flow is a state in which the person is involved in what they’re doing, and is thus, in some way, having fun. Not “having fun” like when playing video games or a board game, maybe, nor doing sports with friends. But some kind of fun nonetheless.

MAIZE: Is there a component of fun also linked to co-presence, to being physically together with other people?

BC: Certainly. In physical relationships with others, we think of fun precisely at a social level; and therefore the joke, the humor, or laughter shared in groups. In literature we don’t actually talk about fun, per se — we use the English humor. But in any case, we refer to an intense coping and adaptation mechanism at both the individual and social level, adopted to mitigate perceived stress. Think about when a difficult — if not dramatic — situation is unfolding, and someone manages to crack a joke to lighten the mood. We laugh, even if at that moment it’s the last thing we’d want to do.

MAIZE: In our survey, across countries, the words most associated with the concept of fun are freedom, trust, and satisfaction. What interpretation did you give this?

BC: I was struck — but not surprised — by the choice of freedom and trust, since these are two words that very often go together: when there’s freedom, it means there’s trust from the other side. Then I thought that, indeed, when we have fun we often associate it precisely with a sense of freedom and trust. Be it with other people or with ourselves, we feel safe. If this weren’t the case, we couldn’t have fun. Satisfaction, on the other hand, is the most obvious: when we have fun we are satisfied with what we are doing, otherwise we… wouldn’t be having fun.

However, I was taken aback by the fact that Italy was the only country with a high value for the association of fun with psychological tranquility, which in other countries was associated much less frequently with “fun.” A concept that, in my opinion, is very related to psychological safety, meaning being able to have fun in a safe environment, where you can also take social and relational risks — as per its definition. It would be interesting to understand what people actually mean by psychological tranquility; with my own professional bias, I immediately thought of psychological safety. Was that what you meant?

MAIZE: There’s definitely a safety component linked to freedom and agency, yes. In a safe environment, where information circulates more freely, decisions can be made with greater awareness, picking up on the concept of relational risk that you mentioned. Another critical facet is reassurance that, when hitches occur, no one will put you against the wall if you express an opinion or a need.

BC: Then I confirm that we more or less read it the same way. However, I’m surprised that, in the survey, psychological tranquility/safety is then highlighted as actually observed in the workplace: that is very much not in line with other research, where the values tend to be much lower. It would be interesting to investigate this further.

MAIZE: Another thing that caught our eye is that, in general, while the first terms associated with fun in the survey are tranquility, freedom, happiness, or satisfaction, others like challenge, experimentation, or play are at the bottom of the list. What’s your take on it?

BC: I see experimentation and challenge on one side and play on the other. They differ, but still coexist.

Challenge and experimentation are part of fun when we’re in a very safe context, like that of play or fun outside the work environment, where one might enjoy experimenting and challenging their limits too, while autonomously deciding when and where to stop, how to move, etc. At work, it’s often other people deciding for me. I’m not alone. So there’s often a perception of widespread uncertainty, in which challenge and experimentation are seen as enemies.

On the other hand, play, in my opinion, has rarely been paired with fun simply because we’re looking at the work sphere.

Work activates the adult self. When I work I am but my adult self, even if maybe, in my private life, I’m a person who actually doesn’t want to take on responsibilities much and be the eternal Peter Pan instead. At work we all have this urge to prove we’re adults, that we’re people others can count on; serious people. And so especially in places where psychological safety is lacking, fun is experienced as “you’re not a serious person.”

Work activates the adult self, and the adult self doesn’t play.

MAIZE: Let’s talk about companies. Since the concept of fun has very personal interpretations, how should firms move to stimulate the well-being aspect without making it become naïve or — worse — an additional source of stress?

BC: Some companies are starting to insert playful activities within their organizational processes, for instance gaming associated with research activities or the selection and development of people. In this case, fun is conveyed through something — a game — that replaces some other pre-existing thing. So it’s not about adding something where there was nothing, which I think makes a difference. Adding playful moments from scratch would be one thing; replacing an old custom — what used to be done with, say, CV screenings, in-baskets, or an assessment center — with a video game is something else entirely. As a company, I’m responding to a need I already had, but in a different way.

Now: if you ask me, fun can also respond to a need for fun in itself. It doesn’t necessarily have to have a goal. Still, if a company is just starting to approach this world, it makes sense to do so by exploiting playful moments for purely organizational or corporate needs; stuff that exists and is currently being handled some other way.

The second essential element is involvement from the leadership team down, and so an awareness journey that needs to be made internally. This is crucial: imagine if I, as an HR representative, viewed the use of video game assessments favorably, but then a manager disqualified them calling them “little games” or something. That would be a problem.

Then, lastly, there’s a communication aspect: it’s known that initiatives like this always need to be sold internally, especially when it comes to largely alien topics like fun is today. It’s important to communicate them well to make people understand how they integrate into the broader well-being picture; but also that of sheer organizational effectiveness. Perhaps we haven’t emphasized this yet, but when we are having fun we also function better. There’s a link between fun, well-being, and performance, which suggests precisely how, when we’re involved, we do our job better. And let me tell you — you can infer a lot about a person from how they approach a game or a fun experience in general.

MAIZE: Does this discourse also apply to happiness at work?

BC: Yes — with a necessary caveat. Companies can adopt practices to promote fun, well-being, and happiness, but it’s unlikely that a company will always be all fun, healthy, and happy.

We understand this intuitively by thinking about the individual: it’s difficult for a person to be healthy, happy, and have fun all the time — if you know someone like that, please introduce them to me!

People might risk expecting that if the company invests in well-being or fun, then they must always have fun or feel good. But no! That’s an unrealistic expectation; and not even a healthy one at that.

MAIZE: Do you think that fun can become a metric, a dimension to keep track of within organizations? In what way?

BC: I believe it can be functional to measure it indirectly, within surveys, questionnaires, or investigations, through aspects that are already being measured such as engagement or satisfaction, perhaps adding elements more strictly related to fun. I’d see it as more challenging to somehow go and measure it by itself.

For two reasons: first is a matter of external validity of the tool, in that considering the low level of maturity that companies have on this topic today, I would see being able to pitch people on measuring fun as rather arduous. Fun hasn’t yet entered the organizational lexicon. Well-being has, though it has taken a while a while. Happiness, on the other hand, struggles; and fun perhaps even more so. It’s still less used, less known, less considered.

The second reason is one we touched on: making people intuitively match fun and work in their heads is hard. Hence the proposal to instead insert its measurement within that of engagement and satisfaction. But there’s actually a third reason too: except for some rare cases, at least in psychology, scales that measure fun at work simply don’t exist. There are scales that measure positive or negative experiences and perceptions, more on an emotional level. But references to fun are infrequent, if not outright absent.