How Do You Keep Employees Engaged with Fun, Low-Cost Activities at Work?

Hi All,

Can fellow HR professionals suggest/share a few ideas for engaging employees with various ongoing activities that can be executed to refresh employees and don't require them to spend much time on it?

For example, some time back, I had started a Quiz Contest wherein I used to send a set of 10 general questions, puzzles, or brain teasers every day to all the employees through email after lunch. This was particularly beneficial as people tend to feel sleepy after lunch, so it served as a good refresher for them. I would award a gift to those who provided the fastest and most correct answers in a week. Additionally, employees with the highest cumulative scores for a month were awarded separately. I received a very positive response to this initiative.

Can you think of more such activities?

Thanks,
Pooja

Hi Pooja,

You have set yourself a challenging assignment but an equally noble one. Unless you engage your employees with motivational inputs, getting peak performance is not easy.

Here are a few suggestions:

- Use crosswords, scrambled words, jumbled proverbs, etc.

- On-the-spot quick talks of 1-2 minutes on humorous topics; limit participation to 5-7.

- Have a simple poetry reading, passage reading, or book review.

- Have a quote of the day and 3 participants from a team talk about it. The best team wins.

- Have a competitive game of Chinese whispers between various teams; ensure at least 7-8 members in the team and use crisp passages or jokes.

Whatever you do, ensure that the activity is not skewed toward exceptional talent, overbearing participants, and highly competitive individuals, or else the others will be demotivated and won’t participate.

To balance, I suggest that you also include activities like a lucky dip, a quick game of housie with just the three line winners, spot prize winners (person wearing a red dress, having a credit card ending with _ _ _ number, etc.).

Feel free to write back for more such ideas.

Best wishes,

Jacob

[Personality Development, Communication Skills, and Written Communication](http://www.actspot.com) – Website

[Actspot's Blog](http://www.actspot.wordpress.com) – My Daily Inspirational and Motivational Blog

[Academy for Creative Training](http://www.poweract.blogspot.com) – My Weekly Inspirational and Motivational Blog

Hi Pooja,

You may please think of an engagement committee consisting of employees from different departments and positions to generate ideas, organize, and execute. First, decide on the value you want to impart to employees through the initiatives. You may consider:

- Individual Sense of achievement & recognition: Essay writings, Poetry, chess (Ensure the activities attract everyone equally, testing the abilities of different kinds of employees).
- Team building or oneness: Theme-based activities like wearing a particular color dress on a specific occasion, decorating cubicle or cabin, team sports.
- Social belongingness: Social initiatives like spending a half day at an orphanage (giving a sense of valuing their life), etc.

Regards,
Hari

Hi Hari,

Thank you for your input. As you and Jacob rightly pointed out, it's important that these activities shouldn't be of interest to only a certain section of the employees. They should be varied from time to time so that everyone finds something of interest at one time or another.

One more short-term ongoing initiative that I have started is various championships like Carom, Chess, and Scrabble competitions. These championships usually last for a month or two and create a lot of excitement among employees.

Regards,
Pooja

Dear Pooja,

You can create an activity calendar for the year. Depending on the budget, you can schedule activities such as:

1. Tambola
2. Birthday celebrations at the end of the month for employees whose birthdays fall in that month.
3. Sports tournaments
4. Incentive plans/activities like Employee of the Month, etc.

Regards,
Manish

My experience is probably not helpful, but perhaps it will spark an idea or two. I used to move the furniture around. You can't do this every day, and the more wired the environment, the more difficult it is to do, but the physical exertion certainly woke everyone up, while the ad hoc teamwork it required was also great. The changed physical environment had a positive influence for days afterwards.

Mike Nugent

Hi Pooja,

Along with the suggestions given by Jacob and Hari, I would also like to add that you may consider holding a fashion show on a particular day where the employees are free to dress as they like, apart from formals. Moreover, you can have an interesting calendar every month specifying the birthdays or anniversaries of the employees.

Employee engagement activities are often confused with "Fun @ Work" activities, due to the similarities in formats and execution; and the terms are used interchangeably.

"Fun @ Work" activities are generally recreational in nature, reduce work fatigue and monotony, enhance the "Quality of Work Life," and bring about more employee satisfaction.

However, Employee Engagement is a complex, powerful, and profound concept, which can prove to be a strategic differentiator in terms of competitiveness. A company having "engaged employees" will ALWAYS OUTPERFORM an equal or a bigger company because an Engaged Employee:

- Understands the business context and can see the "bigger picture"
- Is willing to "go that extra mile"
- Keeps oneself updated with the developments in their field

It was first propounded and conceptualized by William A. Kahn in 1990 and can be defined as, "a heightened emotional connection that an employee feels for their organization, which influences them to exert greater discretionary effort in their work."

I am providing below a few good, interesting links to enable members to better understand the concept of Employee Engagement:

- http://opcuk.com <link updated to site home>
- http://opcuk.com <link updated to site home>
- Employee engagement - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For those interested in "Fun @ Work" activities that involve employees, here is a link that provides more than 100 activities that can be suitably performed in the office:

<link no longer exists - removed>

Warm regards.

Hi Pooja,

Thank you, Raj, for your valuable inputs. The links certainly explain the difference between the two "terms" and how Fun @ work activities can be considered as a subset of Employee engagement activities. It highlights that these terms cannot be used interchangeably.

Regards,
Pooja

Dear Autumn,

Thanks for appreciating my inputs.

@Pooja,

Yes, Pooja, you are perfectly right. 'Fun@Work' is a subset of 'Employee Engagement,' and at times it can be an outcome of Employee Engagement; however, the latter is a far more complex and powerful concept.

Warm regards.

Hi Pooja,

That was a great idea for all to be awake after lunch. Why don't you open a photography competition where the best theme-based photo can be awarded a gift? This can help everyone to let their creativity out and also to identify who is creative in your firm. In my firm, we implemented this idea, and instead of a gift, we featured the 12 winning photos in the 2010 calendar. What do you think, Pooja?

Regards,

Jisha Syriac

Hi Pooja,

Keeping employees engaged requires skill, and it's best done with people who work from the heart. You seem to be a people person, and I am sure you will do well at what you do. I work for a telecom industry, and I run activities throughout the year for my colleagues. Here's how I do it...

I have a cross-functional team set up with high-energy people who share the same interests. This team will be replaced every year to bring fresh ideas and interests; they will be in charge to drive activities across zones throughout the year. A calendar is prepared and published to the employees, taking into consideration all the special days that need to be celebrated. One-minute fun games, surprise spot awards, competitions, indoor sports, cricket, etc., are all part of this calendar. We also organize blood donation camps and free eye check-up camps for all our employees.

Regards,
Marilla
Manager HR