Dear HR, Please Don’t Force Your Idea of Fun on Your Employees

Prior to my brief stint at a lifestyle publication, last year, my friends had warned my excited self that working there would bring me no joy. This didn’t mean that the workplace was necessarily toxic, they clarified, just that if I was expecting post-work dinners, ringing laughter, and joyous colleagues, or even just to feel inspired by the nature of the work, I’d be disappointed. 

And so it went. 

The weekly calls with the entire team led by the manager were monotonous, boring, and drier than the Sahara. My colleagues acted like they’d witnessed unspeakable things in life and had thus chosen silence as a coping mechanism.  The job was a royal bore. 

But honestly, it was still better than the forced fun that some of my friends had to endure in theirs. From annual parties where seniors would get drunk and have awkward conversations or force others to dance, to monthly birthday celebrations involving cheap-ass cake and canned juice, to Secret Santa traditions where they definitely got something lying around in their Santa’s house because Santa forgot to get an actual present – the mundane horrors were many. I’m not saying all office fun sucks. Just that most HRs don’t know how to not organise a lame event no one wants to go to.

In November 2022, a French court ruled that Mr T, a four-year employee with a consulting firm, had been wrongfully fired in 2015 for not participating in “fun” activities organised by the company, including seminars and weekend events. The firm claimed that he had failed to integrate the “fun & pro” value of the company into his work life. 

According to Mr T, these fun activities involved heavy partying and bullying, sharing beds on work trips, mock sexual acts, using crude nicknames for each other, and even posting “made-up” or distorted pictures online. On the part of the employer, the reasons for firing Mr T had to do with him being socially rigid, sitting on the sidelines of social events, and using a demeaning tone to communicate with subordinates. 

A labour court had quashed Mr T’s appeal, but the French high court, citing the European Convention on Human Rights and the French labour code, ruled that he had no obligation to attend these “fun activities.” This right, the court added, was a subset of his freedom of expression. 

Not all of us have the money, the time and the resources to sue bosses who force us to participate in a work culture that might border on toxic or just not your idea of fun. Although the pandemic did bring a halt to these “fun” activites, for some people compulsory mingling with colleagues post working hours can be the only avenue for breaking the ice and getting to know each other. Work days can definitely fly faster if you like and have fun with colleagues. But for others, accompanying the team on an offsite can seem pointless and like they’d rather chill with their own friends instead. But should they just suck it up and do it anyway? 

According to Krunal Shah, who works as an HR manager for a not-for-profit organisation, the purpose of HRs coming up with these activities is to break down the rigid walls of professionalism. 

“It’s the pursuit of making work a little light, less serious, and hoping that employees will look forward to coming to work,” he said. “However, I definitely don’t think these activities should be made mandatory. There could be an employee who just wants to work and go home, and we can’t force them to go for an offsite. Even personally, there have been parties that I haven’t attended because I didn’t feel like it.”

In the book Fun at Work: How to Boost Creativity, Unleash Innovation, and Reinvent the Future of Work Using the Transformative Power of Play (2022), author Greg Winteregg argues that “learning to goof around” can make employees more satisfied in their work and more amenable to solving problems. 

A study published in the Journal of Vocational Behavior found that employees who engage in leisure activities at work, such as playing games or socialising with coworkers, reported higher levels of job satisfaction and were more productive than those who did not engage in such activities. Another study conducted by researchers at the University of Warwick found that happy employees are 12 percent more productive than their unhappy counterparts. The researchers found that providing opportunities for employees to engage in fun activities, such as playing games or having social events, can contribute to their happiness.

Shah acknowledged that some companies might position these activities as an attempt to encourage employees to think of their role in the company as being part of a large, extended family – an idea satirised by digital creator Aiyyo Shraddha in a recent reel that went viral. 

At a time when the anxiety about being laid off runs rampant, such company activities might also come across as shallow attempts to boost morale or an expense that’d be better off going into the employee bank accounts than behind cheap booze. Often, Shah explained, companies that lack foresight might not anticipate having to fire their employers a few weeks after that memorable offsite. 

“They should’ve focused on keeping their employees, no? This happy-happiness is not their KRA. It’s nobody’s KRA,” as Shraddha says in the reel. 

According to psychiatrist Ruksheda Syeda, mental health in the workplace starts and ends with consent across the board, and if consent is assumed or expected then it’s not consent at all. Being forced to be a part of fun activities, especially for members of any kind of minority (for example, in terms of age, gender or religion), might become more of a challenge, as they anyway have to work twice as hard to prove themselves to the majority. 

“The idea of having a [mature] workforce is rooted in the [belief] that I don’t have to be friends with you to work with you,” she said. “There could be anecdotal evidence on how these offsites and other employee-engagement activities are successful, but that’s all they are – anecdotal at best.”

Syeda said that assumed or expected consent in such cases also ignores the realities of neurodivergent and autistic people, someone with crushing social anxiety and even ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). At a time when inclusion undergirds the mechanics of the workplace, the forcing of “fun” activities is challenging in more ways than one for such folks, she added, even triggering an episode of emotional dysregulation.  This can include marked fluctuations in mood, mood swings, extreme tearfulness, anger, as well as aggression towards self and others.

“I am really good at what I do,” said audio engineer Akshay, who preferred to withhold his last name fearing employer retribution. “But I have some kind of social anxiety. So, when my office throws parties that everyone is expected to attend, I dread it for days before. These parties logistically can’t factor in everyone’s personalities and I appreciate the effort but I’ve spent many of them by myself in a corner.”

Akshay’s cheatsheet for dealing with these parties now includes going with a colleague he’s comfortable with, prepping on small talk pointers, and having an exit strategy in mind after he’s met the top bosses. “I’d much rather prefer getting a Diwali/Christmas bonus or even a gift.”

One of the biggest fears that one might have about refraining from participating in these “fun” activities is the extent to which it might affect one’s career in the long term. Will it impact promotions and appraisals? If you don’t participate in that unnecessary offsite, are you going to miss out on critical conversations related to work? There is also a view that people who are more “likeable” get promoted faster, regardless of their skills – with women often being perceived as less likeable. Does participating in these “fun” activities make us more likeable and hence, more likely to be noticed and promoted then?

“If you’re working in a company that cannot respect your boundaries and needs, and instead turns somewhat hostile just because you don’t want to draw rangoli with others, it’s not a healthy workplace, to begin with,” said Manish Mishra, a communications executive with a banking firm. 

Anjali Gowda Ferguson, a psychologist based in New York, said that in such cases the key is to be firm, but also kind when it comes to setting boundaries. “As long as you continue to approach this working relationship with warmth, their hostility will [lessen] when they realise they cannot convince/push you to engage in out-of-office activities,” she said. In other words, you may have to repeatedly remind coworkers that while you value your working relationship, you are unable to engage in external activities and that is alright. 

Zainab Delawala, a 26-year-old software engineer, argued that if the larger purpose behind these activities is employee well-being, companies must carve out meaningful activities from the same “fun” budget. “How about assigning budgets for free therapy sessions, seminars and talks on mental health? Because fun is very subjective. More than the activities itself, it’s about the people and companies cultivating an atmosphere where [employees] consciously want to hang out with each other.”

At a time when people are reassessing the need to physically go to work in the first place, participating in fun activities comes in a distant second place. Syeda notes that some of these activities eat into weekends and are more work than work itself. Broadly speaking, most of us would prefer better pay, flexibility in working from home, robust insurance that’s not a scam, and some semblance of stability in an unstable economy. 

Fun? Well, that can arise from these bare minimum needs being met. 

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