The term ‘play’ is often perceived to be contrasted with ‘work’ and is usually characterised within a work context as a type of activity, which is essentially unimportant, trivial and lacking in any serious purpose. Thus, play and work are commonly perceived to be mutually exclusive and have their own incompatible conventions. However, an increasing number of organisations are going about their business in an increasingly fun and playful way, this ‘playfulness’ is also changing some traditional company processes, policies and business practices and those businesses engaging in such activities express that they have pragmatic reasons for doing this. There is a growing body of evidence, momentum and belief that playfulness in the workplace helps attain better creative solutions to work related issues, helps employees become more effective in their work and makes them feel better in the process. Evidence shows that 'Serious Play' in the workplace usually employs two modes of operation – a generative mode where ideas are generated and explored and a more structured, often cyclical process seeking solutions to problems from the ideas which have been generated earlier, i.e., both divergent and convergent modes of operation are usually employed together for organisations to realise the benefit of employing play in a workplace setting. This talk looks at ‘play’ and how it can be far from trivial in the workplace.
