All work and more play?
In the current economic climate, the value of play at the workplace risks crumbling when it is most desperately needed
EVERY year during the Formula 1 season, I reflect back to 2013. I had brought two customers to the Ferrari paddock seats for some bonding over the Friday practice run. About 90 minutes later, they returned to the office to continue their work – at 9.30 pm. For no particular deadlines, no projects under a time crunch, not even a dislike for F1; just a company culture that could not comprehend or appreciate the importance of play at work.
My philosophy is if we need to spend roughly 40 per cent of our waking hours at work, we should at least make them enjoyable. I have spent the past two decades of my career combining play with success at work. Over nine years at Google, I saw how playful initiatives can spur deep collaboration, innovation and levels of employee engagement that helped the company flourish.
“Play at work” is far from harmful
Leaders often mistake “play at work” with “distractions”. Play is not about break rooms filled with pool tables and arcade games; it is a mindset. It is the permission to let employees think freely, explore, combine disparate ideas in new and exciting permutations, and create in ways that not only stave off boredom and burnout, but also bring people together and cause meaningful business transformation.
In his book Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul, Stuart Brown notes how play is the basis for problem-solving and innovation, helping people learn how to adapt to new situations and develop skills for resolving conflict. It is these new neural connections that can lead to a creative breakthrough on a particularly vexing business problem.
I built the “world’s largest private board game cafe” at the Google Singapore office. Every Friday afternoon, it would buzz with colleagues meeting and making connections in a casual, relaxed setting. Cross-functional teams gathered, swopped ideas, and started on projects that were spawned by a chance encounter over some cards and dice.
Last year (2024), I built a full 60-minute escape room in the office. The most senior leaders from the Asia-Pacific region worked together to solve logic puzzles that unlocked the door. Afterwards, we discussed how they could take their learnings on teamwork back to the office. It was an experience inspiring enough for me to build a new company around it.
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This is not just a phenomenon restricted to Western tech companies. Research by Yang Fei Ran and Vivian Chen Chun-Hsi involving more than 500 employees across Taiwan and Greater China showed a strong positive correlation between workplace fun and employee’s creative behaviours.
The risks of rejecting playful work environments
In the current economic climate, the value of play at the workplace risks crumbling when it is desperately needed the most. As employees scramble to increase productivity and keep heads low to dodge a layoff, morale is dropping, burnout is rising and, worst of all, the sparks of innovation are fading.
When work feels like nothing but work, we inch closer to the stark, mundane and lifeless confines of the dystopian office depicted in the show Severance.
In her book The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth, Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson outlines how a climate of safety encourages risk-taking and the exchange of new, even unfinished ideas, treating mistakes as opportunities to learn and grow. There is no better environment to serve as a foundation for a safe, experimental culture than one that allows for low-risk play.
Coming together in low-stakes, playful environments, like over a game or in an escape room, allows colleagues to experiment, collaborate, communicate and discover in a safe sandbox. Transferring those skills to large, critical business projects becomes easier afterwards, because the skills required and relationship bonds were already tested and forged through play.
Creating a culture that cherishes play
Getting started does not require a huge investment. It can be things as simple as introducing a “curiosity hour”, where employees are encouraged to walk outside and brainstorm for an hour before returning to throw any and all ideas they came up with on the table. No judgment, no ridicule; just ambitious, unrestrained ideas.
Google is well known for informally allowing employees to spend up to 20 per cent of their time on passion projects – a philosophy that directly led to the creation of products like Gmail and AdSense, and I can humbly add my playful projects to that list.
While 20 per cent is a steep investment, what is to stop companies from encouraging something similar at a specific time each week? Imagine how employees might look forward to 5 pm every Wednesday if it became “creativity hour”.
Leadership visibility is exceptionally important here. I recall a popular LinkedIn post about the leadership team at Mastercard Singapore playing an oversized version of Connect Four at a town hall meeting to demonstrate collaboration, trust and team success.
Yang and Chen’s research also demonstrates that a manager’s active support for fun significantly strengthens the impact of play on employee engagement and creative behaviours. For a team to feel that play is a safe and encouraged way to interact, leaders must show by example. Share team photos of leadership at a retreat with a playful component and, in the same message, highlight an acceptable way for employees to participate in play at work.
Some may say, “If it was supposed to be fun, it wouldn’t be called work!” But it does not have to be this way. The upside of play – higher levels of trust, more space to brainstorm and innovate, as well as higher morale and employee engagement – makes the effort worthwhile.
Perhaps now more than ever, in the face of much uncertainty in the world, it is time for Singaporean leaders to embrace a bit more play, rethink their approach to company culture and reap the benefits.
The writer is co-founder of Teamwork Unlocked, which offers leadership and management development programmes using escape rooms
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