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How often do you leave work thinking, Wow, that was fun! Once a week? Once a month? Never? If you arent having funreal funit may be time to rethink your work life, says Bree Groff, author of Today Was Fun: A Book About Work (Seriously). The idea that work needed to be fun didnt hit home for Groff until her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2022. She took a leave of absence from her job at a New York-based transformation consulting firm to care for her and her father, who had Alzheimers disease. After her mother passed away, she went back to work part time with a new perspective. One of the things that became obvious while taking care of my parents is that at some point, well run out of Mondays, she says. They aren’t a renewable resource. So, what are we doing to our lives when we’re wishing away five out of seven days of every week? A common attitude is that work is called work for a reason; its something to get through to get a paycheck. The flip side is: Love what you do, and you’ll never work a day in your life. This phrase suggests that the solution to work being drudgery is that it should be your passion and your identity. That notion also didn’t sit right with Groff. Many of the leaders shed worked with were pouring themselves into their work, but they were also sacrificing their health, sleep, and relationships, hoping for a reward that would come someday in the future. It seemed to me that the answer was somewhere in the middle, Groff says. Every day that I spend at work comes out of the finite bank of days that I have on the planet. What would it take to have fun today? If youre not having fun, Groff offers two places to start. Micro Acts of Mischief Too often, people feel they need to be their most buttoned-up, professional, palatable versions of themselves at work. But once we put on a business mask, we stifle all of our vitality, play, and joy, Groff says. Instead, introduce micro acts of mischief into the day. These are moments of diversion to the work culture or routine. If you have to adhere to a dress code, for example, wear some ridiculous socks. Or add a joke or ridiculous font to a presentation deck. Or literally mix things up, she suggests. One day we rearranged the office furniture, pulling comfy chairs over, so we could all hang out a little bit better, Groff says. The facilities team wasnt pleased with us, but it felt a little mischievous, sneaky, and fun in a way that made our team chuckle. Micro Acts of Connections You can also cultivate fun through micro acts of connections, including camaraderie and self-expression. Groff recommends sending a coworker a direct message or email, expressing appreciation for something they did. You can also ask a colleague to grab coffee. Make it light, she says. The idea is to gain a sense of the people you’re working with, knowing a little bit about their lives outside of work. Where do they live? Do they have a pet? Its getting to know them as a human and not just about the work at hand. Also, look for places to show your personality by putting your own stamp on your work. This isn’t just for creative marketing professionals, Groff says. A barista at a coffee shop can make latte art. Or a project manager can make a brilliant project timeline. How can you put your stamp on your work? Connection and self-expression humanize the workplace, Groff says. We should like the people that we’re spending our days with. Sometimes, we’re spending more time with our colleagues than our families or significant others.” Are We Having Fun Yet? Groff says you can usually tell if you’re having fun, and you can always tell if you’re not. It’s almost childlike in its sensibility. I define fun as a sense of play, experimentation, and vitality. My metric for the day is: How many minutes have I spent laughing? Dont confuse fun-looking workplaces with fun work, Groff adds. Theres a difference between thinking of fun as icing on the work cake, or fun as being the cake itself, she says. If we look at fun as the icing, thats where Ping-Pong tables or happy hour get a bad rap. You cannot fill your days with Ping-Pong and happy hour, or nothing gets done. Id also argue that is a superficial sliver of fun. Having fun at work is using your skills in a way that makes you feel good because you contributed and made an impact on customers, clients, or other parts of the organization. While there is a business argument for having more fun at work, such as increased productivity and performance, the existential argument is much stronger. If I’m a manager, I don’t want to end my career thinking, I really extracted every last hour from that employee or I made them perform better for the business, Groff says. I want to make sure that these humans have made good use of their days on the planet. That they’ve gotten to contribute joyfully and profoundly.
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E-Commerce
Fast Company recently posed the question: Why isnt your workplace wellness program reducing stress? The answer, as the article rightly pointed out, isnt about bad intentionsits about bad execution. Most wellness initiatives are still treating symptoms, not causes. But we need to go even deeper. Workplace wellness isnt failing because its frivolous. Its failing because employees arent engaging with it. Stressed and burned out Corporate America spends an estimated $65 billion a year on wellness perks, from mindfulness apps to meditation pods yet 77% of employees still report feeling stressed, and 82% say theyre at risk of burnout. In the largest academic study of U.S. programs, fewer than half of eligible employees ever engaged with the resources on offer (RAND Corporation). Digital-only benefits fare even worse: app sprawl and discovery fatigue mean that most perks are forgotten before theyre used. A meditation app buried in a browser tab cant move the needle on mental health, absenteeism, or retention. Its easy to blame employees for being disengaged, or to point fingers at toxic culture. But the truth is more subtleand more solvable. Complexity kills engagement When HR teams assemble a buffet of stand-alone appsfinancial coaching here, sleep tools there, therapy platforms somewhere elseevery login is another cognitive task. Overwhelmed workers dont skip your yoga discount because they dislike yoga. They skip it because they dont remember where the link lives. At YuLife, we partnered with the University of Essex to study this problem. We found that bundling insurance, rewards, virtual care, and micro-challenges into one gamified experience radically changed engagement patterns: Users take healthy actions on 20 of 30 days, double the norm 54% return monthly, 50% engage daily Daily steps rose 13%, equivalent to adding 4.5 years of life expectancy Self-reported stress dropped 53%, productivity rose 57% Crucially, activity inside the app predicted use of other benefits. Those included 4× more Employee Assistance Program utilization, 2.4× more virtual GP visits, an 11.5% drop in absenteeism, and a 2.75% drop in turnover Engagement is the missing variable Wellness programs arent underperforming because employees dont care. Theyre underperforming because the programs werent designed with real behavioral engagement in mind. Three blockers we can eliminate today: Perk fragmentationConsolidate your well-being tools. If it takes more than two clicks or logins, it’s too much. Build a single front door, ideally integrated where work already happens (Slack, Teams, a unified app). Slow-burn rewardsPoints that take months to redeem lose meaning. When users can swap earned coins for gift cards the same week, engagement jumps 30% and rises again with leaderboards or friendly duels. One-size-fits-all contentA new parent, a cyclist, and a burnt-out manager dont need the same nudges. Personalised AI-driven prompts that respond to user behaviour drive a 3x increase in healthy habits. Well-being is infrastructure, not a perk We often hear that wellness is hard to measure. But thats usually a reflection of low engagement, not flawed strategy. At 20% adoption, noise drowns out signals. At 50%+, the ROI becomes clear, including a 5% drop in claims costs for employers integrating preventive data into group-risk underwriting. If fewer than half your people open the app, the program doesnt work. No matter how many perks you fund. The takeaway? Treat well-being engagement as a performance indicator like churn, CSAT, or NPS. Then: Start with one frictionless entry point Deliver generous, rapid-fire rewards Use behavioral science (and yes, a little fun) to sustain momentum Track outcomes investors care about: utilisation, risk, absenteeism, retention We dont need more perks. We need platforms people actually use. And that starts by treating engagement as the product and not the afterthought.
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E-Commerce
YouTuber MrBeast made a brief cameo in the new music video for Mariah Carey’s song Type Dangerous, but it was a font that got more screen time. The video is divided into seven acts named after different would-be paramours, like “Mr. Player,” “Mr. Danger,” and “Mr. Beast,” and each act is introduced with red, all-caps text set in Aviano Serif Black, a squat, geometric typeface with short, sharp serifs that was vertically lengthened by 130% for the video. If it seems familiar, that’s because it looks a lot like the typography Carey has used throughout her career, starting with her 1990 self-titled debut album cover. But look closely at the serifs, and you’ll notice it’s not the exact same font. [Images: Columbia Records, Macmillan Publishing] Many artists switch up the typefaces they use to reflect an albums theme. Carey, though, has stuck to similar typefaces throughout her discography, which dates back 35 years. Friz Quadrata Carey’s primary typeface of choice is Friz Quadrata, an award-winning serif by type designer Ernst Friz released in 1966 that’s also used in the logos for Law & Order and Dr Pepper. Used consistently throughout her career and on best-selling albums like Daydream, Music Box, and The Emancipation of Mimi, Carey’s name written in all-caps has over time become as much a part of her brand as her high heels, dresses, and wind machines. Carey also has a monogrammed version of just an M and C. The logo mark is to divas what the Rolling Stones’s tongue and lips logo is to rock bands. [Screenshot: Gamma/YouTube] Though eagle-eyed viewers will notice differences in the letterform for letters like M and R, the customized, heightened Aviano Serif Black looks like a spitting image of Friz Quadrata in the “Type Dangerous” video, which was directed by Joseph Kahn (the director behind hit videos like Britney Spears’s “Toxic” and Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood”). Like a brand refresh you don’t even notice happened, the font choice gives Carey’s video a new bespoke typeface that still looks familiar and classic.
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E-Commerce
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