leisure

What comes to mind when they talk to you about the workplace? We are going to dare to give an answer, and it is seriousness and professionalism. While this is true, aren’t you wondering if it should only be like that? It is important to consider that currently we work with “emotions represented in people”, because each person is a set of emotions and each one is motivated by something different, therefore it is the job of the leaders to avoid or reduce absenteeism to a great extent and reinforce the interpersonal ties that can be generated between collaborators. An effective and recently proven way in large companies is the relaxation spaces or video games room.

According to studies from the University of Toronto [1], employees who take 10-minute breaks every 50 minutes are more productive. If these breaks occur in a game room, productivity is still higher. Initially one can think that it is a meaningless, wasted or even useless expense; that we can use that space to place a meeting room or something more productive, but I’m going to mention 5 reasons why a company should have a video game room in its space:

  1. Skills development: Not only video games, any game requires the participant to have certain skills to win it and it is known that whoever has more developed skills is crowned as a winner, a good leader can include different games to test some skills that he wants his collaborator to have or help him improve them in order to be more productive.
  2. Teamwork: If you are in the leading position what are you looking to promote in your collaborators?, the answers to this would be to enhance collaboration between them, generate greater cooperation instead of islands between them and unnecessary competition among them, prompting them to give their best or as we would say colloquially “put on the t-shirt”. For everyone’s knowledge, multiplayer video games are designed to promote these values, it is time to check to see what kind of people the collaborators are, to look for the right games because as I mentioned earlier, we work with emotions represented in people.
  3. Reduction of Absenteeism: In many companies, employees quit to go work elsewhere and one might think that the only reason for a collaborator’s desertion is a better job offer, but not all people are moved by the money factor; Some are moved by recognition, others by challenges, or by benefits, or by feeling comfortable in their workplace. There are many reasons that motivate a person, which is why if the company has a place of relaxation, stress reduction as a game room, employees will identify the workplace as a second home and will reduce largely desertion.
  4. Resolution of complex problems: It often happens that we encounter a difficult problem to solve and we block ourselves, this is because every problem is a race against time and great stress occurs and ideas do not arise, at that moment it is important that for at least 5 minutes the collaborator clears and is sure to find the solution more effectively.
  5. Coexistence and companionship: In Go Daddy they use a very simple mechanism to foster coexistence, companionship and create interpersonal bonds. They use some racing carts to move around, and in less than nothing they are competing with each other, which looks like something very fun and in turn it generates something more than “co-workers” and it is a friendship and this is very important so that employees feel comfortable in the company as it is harder to say goodbye to friends than to co-workers.

Written by:

Avis Fernando Torres Gongora

 

[1] Tomado de: http://es-bopps.com/blog/beneficios-de-las-sala-de-juegos-en-la-oficina/  16-agosto-2019