Fun is mandatory

A rules sign prohibiting many fun things including music and cycling

Quinn Daley

Quinn who?

A portrait of a trans woman with colourful hair outside at a beer garden

I'm Quinn Daley - pronouns they/them or she/her. I run Fish Percolator which, for half the year, is me going to tech teams - mostly in the charity sector - and helping them to be more effective. I've completed major transformation projects at Alzheimers Society and British Red Cross and before that I headed up the software engineering team at Citizens Advice for three years. I have a blog and a newsletter with tips and I make sure my queer and autistic identity shines into everything I do. The other 6 months of the year I build my own products, including name.pn which allows everyone to have a tiny URL for sharing your name pronunciation and pronouns with usage examples. You might also know me from Pride Place - Leeds's LGBTQ+ community centre and for the last 14 years I've co-run Yorkshire O.P.E.N, the north's main support group for non-monogamous people.

Forced fun!

A house being constructed by a large number of people in uniform

Does it slow you down?

In a remote team

Photo of a person sticking a middle finger up at the camera

There's also a secret aditional reason I like to push my fun agenda on teams with remote workers. Every team has people who opt out of fun, who opt out of talking about their personal lives, who opt out of meetings. Anything to get their heads down and do solo work. But if you let that go on too long, eventually these people can start forgetting their coworkers are humans; that they're all on the same side. They'll start interacting with their colleagues the same way they might with a customer service line they're upset with, or with trolls on the internet. Sometimes people will say "this could have been an email" about a trivial meeting and - well - I disagree. Not every meeting can be an email. Not all work can be asynchronous. Because human teamwork requires human connection if you want everyone to treat each other with respect and patience.

Types of fun

A palette of paint swatches in many colours

Just chat

A serious looking cat looking straight at the camera

The most traditional kind of office fun - people just having idle chatter. Maybe they're talking about a show they're watching or what they did at the weekend. Maybe they've got something to say about the latest company direction. Maybe they have some praise for a colleague's work. There are various ways you can ensure this is happening. I've found a **weekly check-in** meeting is essential ... don't give it too much structure but allow people to go very off-script and talk about their interests and personal lives if they want to, in addition to the work chat (you need the work chat to ensure the "head down" people still show up). In a remote team you want to make sure there are **text channels** for people to just chat during the day - I really like the "narrate your life" mentality where people are constantly talking in chat (about work or otherwise) and managers assume something has happened to them if they're not.

Games and activities

Screenshot of Just One being played on BoardGameArena

Work-like fun

Power hours

Weekly mini-fun

Stack of vinyl records with some audiophile headphones

Types of fun

Make them recurring

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The inevitable drop-off

A woman in a white dress falling into a purple liquid

Leaders are the first to go...

A person with a suitcase leaving through an arch into a sunset

Leaders lead, others follow

...and then

A leaflet burnt almost entirely to ashes

The inevitable drop-off

So repeat this mantra...

Fun is mandatory
Fun is mandatory
Fun is mandatory
(at least for leaders)

And if anyone disagrees...

Tell them Quinn told you:
fun makes you more productive!

fishpercolator.co.uk