Webinars
Succession Planning: Managing Risk and Ensuring Business Continuity
Sep 09, 2010

Breakfast Club
San Francisco: The Next Frontier for Learning and Development
Sep 23, 2010 07:30 am
The Ritz-Carlton, San Francisco
San Francisco, California

CLO Symposiums
Unleashing Learning: From Strategy to Execution
Sep 27, 2010 - Sep 29, 2010
The Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel
Dana Point, California

Executive Briefings

Published June 2010

Marshmallow Dodge Ball and Making Work Fun

  

  Mike Prokopeak

What do morning singalongs, impromptu air hockey matches and marshmallow dodge ball have to do with business? In the case of Umpqua Bank, quite a lot.

Employees — from executives to managers and tellers — of the Portland, Ore.-based bank get together each morning, whether it’s in the head office or in the smallest of the 176 branch locations, for what Umpqua CEO Ray Davis calls “motivational moments” — fun, short exercises to energize workers. It’s a core part of the bank’s strategy and one that’s delivering solid growth.

Since taking over the helm in 1994, Davis has grown Umpqua from a local bank with six locations to a regional powerhouse with branches throughout Northern California, Oregon and Washington. Creating a sense of play among employees was one way the bank grew from $140 million in assets to more than $6 billion, moving from third to first in the market in the process and winning a ranking as one of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2008.

Pamela Meyer, founder of Meyer Creativity Associates and an instructor at DePaul University in Chicago, asked an Umpqua HR leader to describe the impact motivational moments had on employees.

“[She said] the best I can describe it is that people just feel lighter,” Meyer said. “They’re more likely to connect with each other and share resources.”

Meyer said work has come to be associated with too many negative things — structure, routine, stress and boredom, among others. Her book From Workplace to Playspace, published in April, documented the way companies like Umpqua, Google and Chicago-based T-shirt maker Threadless have used a sense of play to change perceptions and drive business results.

“When I was conducting my research, both with individuals that were thriving and with organizations that were thriving, they don’t make distinctions between work and play but in fact create spaces where people are working at the top of their talent,” she said.

Play has gotten a bad rap in business circles, often perceived as something that happens after real work is done. But incorporating play into work is a key dynamic of business success. Successful companies define play broadly to mean the play of new ideas, possibilities and perspectives and look at it as a way to foster learning and create more flexibility and responsiveness.

“You see that they’re creating really high-engagement experiences and not necessarily using play in terms of funny hats and games, but this more expanded version as this space for new possibility to emerge,” Meyer said.

Companies that create play space in this sense consistently engage and provoke people to try new things. They make time and room for relationships to develop, and they intervene and coach managers who have a toxic influence on the culture. But it goes beyond just the managers.