An Enjoyable Place to Work Keeps People

Part 1: I had a long chat the other day with a sales director at a large-ish digital consulting firm, and we fell onto the topic of fun being a key part of going to work. I really liked what he said:

❝So, we’ve lost the fun out of a lot of things, especially since Covid. And that we just have to put up with this.

I remember one where I quit my job around this issue. As I was told them I was leaving, they offered me a lot more.

And I said, ‘I don’t care how much you pay me. It stopped being fun’. And they said, “what do you mean?”

I replied that once upon a time I used to enjoy coming to work. Now, you’re paying me to come to work. I’ve done everything here that I wanted to do, and I’ve done a whole lot more.

But since the company’s changed, we’ve gone in a different direction.

And they said, “will you want more?” And I said no, but even the interactions with the clients now isn’t fun. We used to have clients who loved us.

Now they’ve had couple of bad experiences, and boom, they leave❞

What are my big takeaways from this?

💯 a fun atmosphere is professional and fits with career development.
💯 a fun atmosphere can also mean serious one when need be.
💯 if clients don’t feel it’s fun being with us long-term, then they’ll start to, at least, trail off.
💯 pay increases only get you so far, if the culture is crap.
💯 we’ve never really stopped wanting to have fun since we were kids, no matter our age or stages.

What percentage of candidates REQUEST to work in a non-fun work environment?