This research demonstrated that fun in the workplace

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505355research-article2013CQXXXX10.1177/1938965513505355Cornell Hospitality QuarterlyTews et al.Human Resources ManagementDoes Fun Pay? The Impact of WorkplaceFun on Employee Turnover andPerformanceCornell Hospitality Quarterly54(4) 370­–382© The Author(s) 2013Reprints and permissions:sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navDOI: 10.1177/1938965513505355cqx.sagepub.comMichael J. Tews1, John W. Michel2, and Kathryn Stafford3AbstractThis research demonstrated that fun in the workplace has both beneficial and potentially negative effects on employees inthe hospitality industry. This research focused on the impact of fun activities and manager support for fun on employeeperformance and turnover. Fun activities include such endeavors as productivity contests, social events, teambuildingactivities, and public celebrations of work achievements and personal milestones. In turn, manager support for fun reflectswhether managers in general allow and encourage employees to have fun on the job. With a sample of 195 servers from anational restaurant chain, we found that fun activities had a favorable impact on performance and manager support for funhad a favorable impact in reducing turnover. Interestingly, manager support for fun had an adverse impact on performance.Thus, whether fun ultimately is beneficial depends on the type of fun and the desired human resource outcome.Keywordsworkplace fun; turnover; retention; performance; affective commitmentIt has long been argued that fun matters in the workplace.The roots of the modern workplace fun movement can befound in the work of Peters and Waterman (1982) and Dealand Kennedy (1982), who encouraged managers to developorganizational cultures that promote play, humor, and fun.More recently, fun has been advocated in the popular pressto promote energized and productive work environments(Lundin, Paul, and Christensen 2000). In fact, a number oforganizations, such as Pike Place Fish Market, Google,IBM, and Southwest Airlines, have incorporated fun intotheir organizational cultures with great reported success(Collinson 2002; Karl et al. 2005; Sunoo 1995). Proponentsof fun suggest a host of favorable outcomes, such as higheremployee job satisfaction, morale, creativity, performance,and retention, as well as reduced employee tardiness, absenteeism, and burnout (Abner 1997; Abramis 1989; Lundin,Paul, and Christensen 2000). Despite the anecdotal evidence of the benefits of fun, academic research has onlybegun to test the value of fun within the last decade.The central premise of this article is that fun may be ofstrategic importance for employee retention and productivity in the hospitality industry. In one respect, fun may promote camaraderie and the development of cohesive workingrelationships among employees. Moreover, fun may motivate employees to work to their potential by making thework more enjoyable, reducing stress, and directingemployees toward accomplishing their performance goals.Supporting the assertion that fun is valued in the hospitalityindustry, Dermody (2002) reported that fun was one of thetop reasons cited by restaurant managers as to why theiremployees remained with their establishments. We believethat hospitality employees certainly do appreciate a workenvironment that includes fun, but we need to further examine the actual business impact of fun in the workplace.Toward this end, the goal of this research is to test the popular belief that fun matters in the hospitality industry in termsof employee retention and performance. In that context, wefocus on the impact of two types of fun—fun activities andmanager support for fun—on turnover and performanceamong servers at a national restaurant chain.What’s Fun Got to Do with It?As we said, academic research has only recently begun tofocus on the business value of fun. These studies havefocused on various aspects of workplace fun and its1Penn State University, University Park, PA, USALoyola University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA3Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA2Corresponding Author:Michael J. Tews, Penn State University, School of HospitalityManagement, 121 Mateer Building, University Park, PA 16802, USA.Email: mjt17@psu.eduDownloaded from cqx.sagepub.com by guest on November 19, 2015371Tews et al. outcomes, and they have included both quantitative andqualitative investigations. As a whole, these studies haveprovided an initial step toward establishing impact of funin the workplace.Karl and colleagues focused on the impact of experienced fun, which refers to whether individuals experiencethe existence of fun on the job. Peluchette and Karl (2005),for instance, established that experienced fun was positivelyrelated to job satisfaction for healthcare employees.Subsequently, Karl and Peluchette (2006a) found that experienced fun buffered the impact of emotional exhaustion onjob dissatisfaction among healthcare workers, and Karl,Peluchette, and Harland (2007) demonstrated that experienced fun was positively related to job satisfaction andnegatively related to emotional exhaustion. Among studentsemployed in service settings, Karl and Peluchette (2006b)found that experienced fun was positively related to job satisfaction and to employee perceptions of customer servicequality. Finally, Karl, Peluchette, and Hall (2008) demonstrated with volunteers that experienced fun was positivelyrelated to job satisfaction and negatively related to turnoverintentions.McDowell (2004) and Fluegge (2008) focused on theimpact of fun as a multidimensional, higher order construct.McDowell developed a four-dimensional measure of fun,used in both of these studies, which included socializing,celebrating, personal freedoms, and global fun. Socializingrefers to friendly social interactions among coworkers; celebrating refers to marking special events and having socialgatherings at work; personal freedoms refers to employeesbeing afforded flexibility and autonomy regarding workplace attire, playing music, and playing around at work; andglobal fun refers to an overall evaluation of whether anorganization has a fun work climate. With oil companyemployees, McDowell demonstrated that fun was significantly related to job satisfaction, affective organizationalcommitment, and turnover intentions. ExtendingMcDowell’s work, Fluegge found that fun has an impact onjob performance for working undergraduate students. Thatstudy provided evidence that fun has a positive impact ontask performance, creative performance, and organizationalcitizenship behavior. However, it should be noted that sincefun was examined as a single dimension, McDowell andFluegge did not assess which forms were more influential.Tews, Michel, and Bartlett (2012) examined the impactof three forms of fun in the context of applicant attraction.They asked a sample of undergraduate job seekers to evaluate hypothetical recruiting scenarios that included threeforms of fun: fun activities, fun coworker interactions, andfun job responsibilities. Their results demonstrated thatfun was a stronger predictor of applicant attractionthan compensation and opportunities for advancement.Moreover, fun coworker interactions and fun job responsibilities were stronger predictors of applicant attractionthan fun activities.Some qualitative investigations have viewed the impactof fun in a more critical light. In one such piece, Redmanand Mathews (2002) reported on the implementation of a“fun culture,” which called on managers to be enthusiasticabout employees having fun and saw the organization sponsor fun activities. While this program improved staff relations, reduced stress, and increased service quality, Redmanand Mathews found that some individuals viewed the program cynically. Similarly, Fleming (2005) found that manyemployees disliked company-sponsored fun, considering itinauthentic and fake. These studies suggest that not allforms of fun are equal and that some forms of fun may bemore valued than others.Despite what we currently know, additional research iswarranted in two key respects. One, research is needed thatfurther examines the impact of fun on key behavioral outcomes, such as employee turnover and performance, to substantiate the generalizability of previous findings. Two,research is necessary that examines the impact of differenttypes of fun on these outcomes, given that not all types offun may be equal. While fun may have value in the workplace, additional work that examines fun in a more nuancedperspective would be fruitful.The Impact of Fun on Turnover andPerformanceWorkplace fun is a multifaceted construct that refers to “anysocial, interpersonal, or task activities at work of a playfulor humorous nature which provide an individual withamusement, enjoyment, or pleasure” (Fluegge 2008, 15).As illustrated in the studies reviewed earlier, fun can bederived from various sources on the job. This researchfocuses on two aspects of fun—fun activities and managersupport for fun. We focus on these two aspects of funbecause they are largely under management’s direct control,and because management may have a fair amount of discretion in implementing such aspects of fun in the workplace.Fun activities include such endeavors as productivity contests, social events, teambuilding activities, and public celebrations of work achievements and personal milestones.Such activities have been a common focus of popularizedaccounts of fun at work and several empirical investigations(e.g., Ford, McLaughlin, and Newstrom 2003; Hemsath,Yerkes, and McCullen 1997; Karl et al. 2005). Managersupport for fun, in turn, is conceptualized as the extent towhich managers allow and encourage employees to havefun on the job. This type of support, which is similar toMcDowell’s (2004) personal freedoms construct, includesadopting a relatively casual business attitude and affordingemployees the opportunity to have fun at work.Fun and employee turnover.  Employee turnover is arguablyone of the hospitality industry’s greatest management challenges. Turnover rates for entry-level employees in hotelsDownloaded from cqx.sagepub.com by guest on November 19, 2015372 Cornell Hospitality Quarterly 54(4)and restaurants can easily exceed 50 percent annually(Hinkin and Tracey 2000; Tracey and Hinkin 2008; Wildes2005), straining organizations with escalating costs and lostproductivity (Hinkin and Tracey 2000). Moreover, givenhigh turnover and the need to quickly fill vacancies, managers often fall victim to hiring warm bodies without concernfor qualifications, which only compromises the guestexperience.Fun may be an antidote to the turnover challenge, sincemost individuals want more from work than financial compensation. In addition to sufficient pay, employees seekintrinsic satisfaction, quality relationships with others, andenjoyment in their work (Grant and Parker 2009).Furthermore, given the large amount of time spent on thejob, individuals would likely prefer the experience to beenjoyable and fun. While too much fun may be a bad thing,a healthy dose may enhance employees’ quality of work life.In one respect, fun may be important in reducing turnover among hospitality employees because fun is arguablyone of the reasons why individuals seek employment in thehospitality industry in the first place. The hospitality industry is typically thought of as a fun and social industry, andindividuals may want to work in hospitality because it is funand dynamic. New hires may soon find that not all hospitality work environments are particularly fun, however.Whether employee needs and expectations are met withrespect to fun may determine ultimately whether employeesremain with their place of employment.Fun is also thought to help reduce turnover because itmay compensate for conditions of employment that are notgenerally favorable. Entry-level hospitality work is oftenconsidered “low skill and low pay” and is typically not conducive to promoting long-term retention. Hinkin and Tracey(2000) asserted that a number of outdated human resourcemanagement (HRM) practices continue to plague the hospitality industry and contribute to the perennial turnover challenge. They contended that employees often perform routinetasks, are given little autonomy in carrying out their work,receive inadequate supervision, and are typically poorlycompensated for their efforts. Furthermore, work shifts arefrequently erratic and irregular (DiPietro and Milman2004), and the work is often emotionally demanding(Ashforth and Humphrey 1993). In spite of these negatives,fun may create a more favorable work environment andpromote retention.On another front, fun could curb turnover because itmay foster more cohesive interpersonal relationships.Maertz and colleagues argued that high-quality relationships are key forces that embed employees in organizations(Maertz and Campion 2004; Maertz and Griffeth 2004).Similarly, Mossholder, Settoon, and Henagan (2005, 608)asserted that high-quality interpersonal relationships“enmesh individuals within a relational web, making themless susceptible to forces that could dislodge them fromtheir organization.” In the hospitality industry, coworkerrelationships may be especially important given the interactional nature of job responsibilities. We argue that funactivities and manager support for fun allow employees tointeract with each other informally and facilitate individuals getting to know each other better, thereby providing acontext that facilitates the development of friendships.Based on these interrelated arguments, it is hypothesizedthat fun activities and manager support for fun will be significantly related to turnover.Hypothesis 1a: Fun activities will be negatively relatedto turnover.Hypothesis 1b: Manager support for fun will be negatively related to turnover.Fun and employee performance.  Fun may also have a significant impact on employee performance for three reasons.First, fun may represent a positive job resource, in line withthe job demands-resources model, which proposes thatgreater job resources lead to fewer job demands and greateremployee well-being (Demerouti et al. 2001). Fun may be aresource for hospitality employees because it fosters socialrelationships that provide social support to combat thestress of service work and enables individuals to immersethemselves in their work and be more productive. Second,fun may serve as an individual recovery mechanism andtherefore promote sustained effort (Sonnentag 2003). Funmay allow employees to take momentary time off fromtheir tasks, recharge, and thus be more engaged when ontask. Finally, in the context of fun activities, fun could facilitate goal accomplishment, such as in the case of sales productivity contests. Such contests with special incentives arewidely popular among restaurant organizations to enhancecheck averages and total sales revenue (Murphy, Dacin, andFord 2004). If properly designed, such activities likely havea significant influence on the effort employees devotetoward achieving sales goals. Because fun may engageemployees in their work roles in a variety of ways, funactivities and manager support for fun are hypothesized tohave a positive relationship with employee performance.Hypothesis 2a: Fun activities will be positively relatedto performance.Hypothesis 2b: Manager support for fun will be positively related to performance.Interaction between fun activities and manager support forfun. An additional issue to be examined is whether funinteracts with management support in influencing turnoverand performance. It may be the case that fun activitieswould have the greatest impact when managers support fun.Considering the resistance to fun activities in some instances(Fleming 2005; Redman and Mathews 2002), we believethat employees may be more resistant when activities areincongruent with other aspects of work. However, when funDownloaded from cqx.sagepub.com by guest on November 19, 2015373Tews et al. activities and manager support for fun align, the overallimpact could be greater. This argument builds on strategicHRM research findings that demonstrate that HRM practices are more effective when they are in alignment with oneanother (Delery and Doty 1996). Given that manager support sets the stage for fun in the workplace, fun activitiesshould be more effective when they are congruent with thissupport. When manager support for fun is low, employeesare thought to perceive such activities as artificial and contrived. However, when manager support for fun is high,employees are thought to perceive these activities as moregenuine. In this case, fun activities would likely be moreeffective in achieving favorable outcomes.Hypothesis 3a: The impact of fun activities on turnoverwill be stronger when there are greater levels of managersupport for fun.Hypothesis 3b: The impact of fun activities on performance will be stronger when there are greater levels ofmanager support for fun.Younger versus older employees.  The other issue we wantedto investigate is whether fun has a different impact onemployees of different ages. A common perception is thatyoung individuals (particularly the “millennials,” born in1980 and later) generally value fun more than their babyboomer elders do. Researchers have suggested that millennials prefer work environments that emphasize freedom,status, and social involvement, and they are quick to leavetheir jobs if these needs are not met (Crumpacker andCrumpacker 2007; Dries, Pepermans, and De Kerpel 2008;Loughlin and Barling 2001; Smola and Sutton 2002). Giventhe relative youth of most hospitality workers, fun may bevalued in the hospitality industry on the whole. That said,there is still variability in age among entry-level employees,and we hypothesize that the dimensions of fun will exhibitstronger relationships with turnover and performance foryounger employees than older ones.Hypothesis 4a: Fun activities and manager support forfun will have a stronger negative impact on turnover foryounger versus older individuals.Hypothesis 4b: Fun activities and manager support forfun will have a stronger positive impact on performancefor younger versus older individuals.Affective commitment.  The final issue to be examined in thisresearch is the extent to which affective organizational commitment mediates the relationship of fun with turnover andperformance. Affective commitment, which reflects thedegree to which employees identify with, are involved in,and enjoy membership in the organization (Allen & Meyer1990), is one of the most important attitudes driving individual behavior in the workplace (Meyer et al. 2002). Whenemployees are emotionally attached to the organization, theyare more likely to exert extra effort toward meeting organizational goals and to desire to continue working with it. Infact, a meta-analysis by Meyer et al. (2002) demonstratedthat affective commitment is a robust antecedent of bothemployee performance and employee turnover. For thesame reasons that we believe fun would have a favorableimpact on employee turnover and performance, we believethat fun activities and manager support for fun should leadto greater levels of affective commitment. In support of thisargument, McDowell (2004) demonstrated that fun is positively related to commitment. Given that fun should promote affective commitment and that affective commitmentshould favorably influence turnover and performance,affective commitment is hypothesized to mediate the relationships between the dimensions of fun and the turnoverand performance outcomes.Hypothesis 5a: The impact of fun activities and manager support for fun on turnover will be meditated byaffective commitment.Hypothesis 5b: The impact of fun activities and manager support for fun on performance will be meditatedby affective commitment.MethodSampleThe sample for this study included 195 restaurant serversfrom a casual-theme restaurant chain in the United States.The employees worked in 17 restaurants in one of the company’s regional districts in the Northeastern United States.The sample was 68 percent female and 72 percent Caucasian.The average age was 25.67 years. The average organizationaltenure at the beginning of the study period was 1.45 years.ProcedureWe invited 502 servers to participate in our study and complete a survey about their experiences at work. The surveyincluded items relating to demographic characteristics, funactivities, manager support for fun, and affective commitment. Of the 502 survey packets sent out, we received 206with useable data, yielding an initial participation rate of 41percent. We obtained corporate sales performance data foreach employee for the two weeks following survey administration. Six months later, we checked corporate recordsfor employees’ voluntary turnover. Eleven participants ofthe initial 206 were excluded from the final sample becausethey were terminated, resulting in the final sample of 195.MeasuresFun activities.  This fun activities scale included five itemsbased on Ford, McLaughlin, and Newstrom’s (2003) study.Downloaded from cqx.sagepub.com by guest on November 19, 2015374 Cornell Hospitality Quarterly 54(4)The scale was refined through discussions with the organization’s vice president of human resources to ensure thatthe activities and corresponding item wording were appropriate for the organizational context. The five activities areas follows: (1) social events (e.g., holiday parties and picnics), (2) teambuilding activities (e.g., company-sponsoredathletic teams and bowling nights), (3) competitions (e.g.,sales and productivity contests), (4) public celebrations ofwork achievements (e.g., public recognition for outstandingresults and employee of the month programs), and (5) recognition of personal milestones (e.g., recognition of birthdays, weddings, and anniversaries of employment). Theemployees indicated how frequently each activity occurredwith a 5-point scale ranging from 1 = never to 5 = all thetime. The internal consistency reliability estimate for thescale was .75.Manager support for fun.  Five items were used to measuremanager support for fun, based on a measure developed byShanock and Eisenberger (2006) and adapted to reflect support for having fun in the workplace. Examples include“My managers care about employees having fun on the job”and “My managers try to make working here fun.” Therespondents indicated the extent to which they agreed witheach statement using a 5-point response scale ranging from1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. The internalconsistency reliability estimate for the scale was .97.Affective commitment.  Six items adapted from Meyer andAllen (1997) were used to measure affective commitment. Sample items included the following: “[Companyname] has a great deal of personal meaning for me” and“I feel emotionally attached to [company name].” Therespondents again indicated the extent to which theyagreed with each statement using a similar 5-pointresponse scale. The internal consistency reliability estimate for the scale was .87.Voluntary turnover.  Voluntary turnover was coded dichotomously as 1 for leavers and 0 for stayers. For the finalsample of 195 employees, 58 employees left, and 137stayed. The voluntary turnover rate for the study periodwas 30 percent.Performance. We measured servers’ performance by theirsales per guest. We focused on sales per guest as opposed tooverall sales because overall sales is more a function of thenumber of hours and shifts worked. As indicated above, thesales data were obtained for the two weeks following survey administration.Control variables. Employee age, gender, ethnicity, andprestudy tenure were used as control variables in the analyses. Gender was coded 1 for female and 0 for male. Ethnicity was coded 1 for Caucasian and 0 for other ethnic groups.Analytic StrategyRandom coefficient modeling (RCM) was used to test thehypothesized relationships. RCM was used as opposed tologistic and ordinary least squares regression because thestudy participants were nested within restaurants, wherebythe assumption of independence may be violated. Indeed,the intraclass correlation, ICC(1), estimate was .23 for turnover and .24 for sales performance, indicating that 23 percent of the total variance in employee turnover and 24percent of the variance in sales performance could beexplained by restaurant location. RCM partitions the totalvariance into the within-group and between-group components, thereby controlling for the nonindependence issue(Bliese and Hanges 2004).The RCM analyses were performed using the…

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