You may love your business and enjoy what you do, but do your employees love their jobs as much as you do? If the fun factor is missing from your workplace, here are some reasons to take steps to put more fun in your employees' lives.

Fun Cancels Out Stress

It's nearly impossible to have fun and be stressed at the same time. Having fun in the workplace will break up any tension that may be hanging around and make everyone feel better.

Fun Keeps Employees Around

When an employee quits, it disrupts the entire flow of the business. Time and effort is required to hire a replacement, and the other employees may be pressed into service to cover that employee's shifts and duties in the interim. Making work more fun will lead to better employee retention so that the business runs more smoothly.

Fun Attracts More Customers

When the workers are having fun, customers notice and respond. Fun workplaces are something special, and word will get around after a while and bring new people in to experience the fun, too.

Ways to Bring Fun Into the Workplace

• Contests and games are fun ways to encourage performance. If they are kept lighthearted and don't become cutthroat, employees can be rewarded for meeting goals and other aspects of their work. Contests can also be purely for fun, like a costume contest at Halloween or a decorate your work space contest for office workers.
• Eat together on a regular basis. Having everyone bring in a dish to share once a month or at least on holidays can help employees form bonds and have positive time together. As the business owner, make sure to participate and set the tone with positive interactions and a fun attitude.
• Put board games or a ping pong table in the break room. Employees can play on their breaks rather than just hang out and think about unhappy things. If your budget allows, get a Wii so employees can exercise on their breaks.
• Add lots of color. Repainting, hanging posters on the walls and inexpensive decorating with color can brighten everyone's mood so they will be happier to come to work. For retail locations, this can translate into happier customers as well.
• Promote random acts of kindness. You can start this by anonymously leaving treats for one or more workers with a note to pass it on to someone else. Hopefully, the recipients will keep it going, and when it eventually fizzles, start it up again with someone different. It's fun and exciting to not know when the next random act will show up, and to be the one who gets to plan something nice and unexpected for someone else.
• Go all out. Whatever your business decides to do, do it with all the enthusiasm you can muster. Enthusiasm, passion and creativity are exciting and fun, not to mention attractive. A company culture like this can attract high quality employees who won't settle for humdrum or average, and this kind of employees will move your business forward with their own enthusiasm and ideas.

Most of this office fun is inexpensive or even free, but if funding is needed for anything from paint to a pool table, a merchant cash advance can provide the needed capital to invest in making your workplace a place your employees will look forward to being.

Quikstone Capital Solutions provides merchant cash advances to help businesses get cash to meet their goals.