Understanding the social benefits for playful employees in the workplace

Abstract

While play and playfulness are essential for development, its benefits may extend across many aspects of life. Despite the growing interest in the intrapersonal benefits of playfulness, research is sparse on its social consequences in organizations. In this research, we devise and test an expanded model of the social implications of employee playfulness by examining how employee playfulness affects peer perceptions and subsequent social reactions. Through a pre-registered experiment and a multi-wave field study (N = 603), our results show that employee playfulness can evoke peer authenticity perceptions about the focal employee; particularly, when team competitive climate is high. These perceptions contribute to several social benefits for the playful employees, including enhanced leadership judgments, increased social support, and decreased social undermining by peers. Our work expands the understanding of social reactions to employee playfulness by elucidating the underlying mechanisms and identifying key contextual moderators. We discuss the practical implications of our findings, and suggest avenues for future research.