What a week, huh? 

Lemon, it’s only Wednesday.

To anyone outside of the Simplus online Slack channel, that exchange between Liz Lemon and Jack Donaghy from 30 Rock, a television show, isn’t all that extraordinary. But at Simplus, posting this meme on Slack every Wednesday by one of our delivery directors has been a running joke for almost a year. People look forward to it almost as much as hearing Rebecca Black sing “It’s Friday” every week on the “random” channel. Well, almost.

The point is, Simplus employees like to have fun. Just try sitting through a company-wide virtual meeting without laughing. You can’t. 

It was especially challenging the month every person who wanted to speak had to tell a Dad’s joke before they could talk. Then there was the company meeting Powerpoint presentation where Elf on the Shelf appeared on random slides. The employee who guessed the correct number of elves at the end of the meeting won a prize. 

Why would we go to so much trouble to create a fun environment for our employees? Because I believe companies owe it to their employees to create a fun environment. Simplus employees work very hard; the executive team expects a lot from our teams, and our customers depend on them to do their best. That amounts to large doses of pressure most of the time. Sometimes, the frustration from those responsibilities spills over onto how they feel about their job. Before you know it, your valued employee feels disengaged. 

That’s why we take having fun pretty seriously around here. Our commitment to protecting the playful, fun side of our work environment is an important part of our work relationships and culture. Experts say that companies with happy employees outperform competitors by 20 percent, and research shows that organizations with highly engaged employees have 17 percent higher productivity and 21 percent higher profitability. Not only is a fun environment great for employees, but it’s also good for business. 

What makes a workplace fun?

A fun work environment does more than feed hungry employees free food and supply foosball tables. When you watch how employees engage with each other both in-person and online, you realize how important it is to understand what your employees think of your company, what it does well, and which strategies fall short. 

Having fun and getting together are at the heart of company culture, employee retention, and employee engagement. Because Simplus is a globally remote operation, we rely on technology to connect with each other. And that has enabled our HR team and regionally-based teams to…

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