Many firms incorporate supposedly fun activities into their office culture with good intentions. However, pushing mandatory fun onto workers can result in unintended consequences.

There are multiple benefits to having a fun and laid-back work environment: employee satisfaction, more creativity and positive company branding, to name just a few. It’s little surprise, then, that many companies promote lightheartedness and fun in their office culture.

However, incorporating fun into work activities has raised some questions about whether mixing business with pleasure always works, and at what cost.

A recent study, published in the journal Human Relations, examines management practices that involve fun and individuality in the workplace. Professor Peter Fleming, of Queen Mary College at the University of London, and the University of Bristol’s Andrew Sturdy examined a call center where phone agents are expected to live by “focus, fun and fulfillment” (the 3Fs) and are continually encouraged to be themselves, according to the British Psychological Society’s Occupational Digest.

“The company promotes itself akin to a permanent party, running training events that involve drinking and scoping out sexual conquests, and extends this atmosphere into working hours, via fancy dress events and a culture of dating and flirting,” Occupational Digest explains.

In interviewing the employees, the researchers revealed that the unorthodox work culture, meant to promote diversity and lift management control, actually garnered some negative feedback.

“As we see, some are disillusioned that the promises don’t line up with reality. Others may be drawn into dependency, as they’ve been encouraged to draw their social world from the same well as their pay-check,” Occupational Digest says. “…Overall, the individuality culture discourages ways of thinking that cultivate solidarity across the workforce.”

As employers encourage engagement activities, whether through a softball league, hiking trips or other team-building exercises, there’s also the matter of the “forced fun” nature of such exercises.

One major question arises: Does mandatory fun at work strip workers of their true personalities?

Grant McCracken, MIT research affiliate and author of the book Chief Office Culture, questions the implications of forced fun in the workplace, and whether it can lead to an inauthentic workplace.

“When we commandeer the emotional lives of our employees, we waste a valuable resource,” McCracken writes at Harvard Business Review’s The Conversation blog. “Left to their own devices, employees represent a wonderful variety of attitudes, interests and activities.”

Indeed, not all people have the same idea of fun, so it’s easy to see how a constantly fun culture can mask our true personalities. Yet it’s also important that employers monitor fun, which can go too far.

Perhaps the most easily occurring risk in bringing more fun to the workplace is that jokes or supposedly fun team-building exercises can get out of hand and quickly become unprofessional.

“Like most things in life there is a flipside, and humor is no exception. It has its dark side, too,” Donna Flagg, author of the book Surviving Dreaded Conversations, writes at Psychology Today’s Office Diaries blog. “Because as much as teams and businesses thrive when employees feel ‘happy,’ the wrong kind of humor can destroy morale and poison an environment.”

While Flagg acknowledges that humor can be good for a workplace, she also explains that humor can hurt or heal, depending on how it is used.

One extreme example of workplace fun run amok was highlighted a few years ago when a lawsuit emerged from a supposedly “fun” workplace atmosphere. A saleswoman sued her employer, revealing its bizarre workplace culture. According to Broderick Law Firm’s California Sexual Harassment Law Blog, the woman was subjected to spankings that the company enforced to “build camaraderie.” The Wall Street Journal‘s Law Blog explains that “the spanking was part of a team-building exercise for its sales force — winners also reportedly made the losers wear diapers and fed them baby food.”

The lesson here: Be cautious with the type of humor used at work.

While it’s important to mitigate and control the risks of adding fun to the workplace, it is important to realize that fun companies can be very successful, too.

Arguably the poster child of a thriving and fun company, Zappos.com provides its employees with free lunches, no-charge vending machines and a full-time life coach on staff, according to CNNMoney.com’s latest 100 Best Companies to Work For list. One of the online shoe retailer’s guiding tenets: “Create fun and a little weirdness.” Its 2009 revenue: $1.2 billion.

Resources

“Being Yourself” in the Electronic Sweatshop: New Forms of Normative Control
by Peter Fleming and Andrew Sturdy
Human Relations, February 2011

Be Yourself, or Else: How Fun is Used in High-Control Workplaces
Occupational Digest (The British Psychological Society), March 29, 2011

Is Workplace Fun Really Fun?
by Adi Gaskell
Chartered Management Institute, March 30, 2011

The Problem of Forced Fun
by Grant McCracken
The Conversation (Harvard Business Review), Jan. 25, 2010

Laughter is Good for Corporate Souls Too
by Donna Flagg
Office Diaries (Psychology Today), June 13, 2010

Jury Finds Woman Entitled to $1.4 Million Settlement for Being Spanked at Work
California Sexual Harassment Law Blog (Broderick Law Firm), Nov. 3, 2010

Sexual Harassment in California: A Twofer
by Peter Lattman
Law Blog (The Wall Street Journal), Jan. 18, 2009

100 Best Companies to Work For
CNNMoney.com, Feb. 7, 2011

Zappos Retails its Culture
by Christopher Palmeri
Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Dec. 30, 2009