Game Over? Weekend get-togethers, mandatory participation--boy, your workplace fun is starting to seem like . . . work.

When employees at Minneapolis-based e-commerce services firmImaginetwant to unwind, they have a little fun. Sometimes the staff takesin a minor-league baseball game or a picnic. Other times, they gettogether for bowling or wine tasting. They even had aSurvivor-esque staff contest once. The goal of all this,says president and CEO Scott Litman, 34, is to take a breather."It's nice after a long week to get together torelax," he says. "Sometimes it's a wrap-up to theweek. Other times, we're just catching our breath becausewe'll be working over the weekend."

In our low-unemployment, 24/7 economy, employers like Imaginettry to do everything they can to make work fun. These days,companies are promoting their workplace cultures as much as theirproducts. BIZ Experiencess hope that offering opportunities for fun,whether picnics, barbecues or watergun fights, will ease theirrecruiting and retention challenges.

But while employers strive to show their fun sides, surveys showemployees are putting more value on their personal time. A May 2000Radcliffe Public Policy Center and Fleet Financial Group survey of1,008 workers revealed two-thirds were not satisfied with theirwork/family balance. When asked to rank job factors ranging frompersonal time to salary and job prestige, having a schedule thatallowed for personal time was No. 1 on the list. (Last on the list?Having a high-prestige job.) In today's crazy, dotcom-fueledeconomy, personal time is as powerful as a paycheck. "We foundpeople were making family time a priority," says ShannonQuinn, a member of the study's research team at the RadcliffePublic Policy Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "They werewilling to trade money for personal time."

Happy Hour?

The Radcliffe study also revealed another trend: Personal timeis becoming more important to younger workers, particularlyworkaholic Gen Xers heading into their 30s and starting families.Lifestyle changes are suddenly creating the need for more personalspace away from the job. "Once only concerned with salary, GenXers are now looking for time. They're starting to negotiatetime for salary, and it's turning employers on theirears," says Cam Marston, co-founder of MarstonCommunications, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based consultingfirm that follows Gen X trends.

Mark Oldman, 32, co-founder of New York City-based career Website Vault.com, says companies are hiring "Julie McCoy cruisedirector types," whose job it is to come up with fun ideas.All employees need to do is show up. "Companies are trying toengineer conviviality," he says. "On the good side, itcan increase the quality of life in the workplace. On the other, itcan come off as forced, contrived, even counterproductive in somecases." Can employers take fun too far?

Catherine, a Gen X employee who asked that her last name bewithheld, has experienced this trend toward fun in Silicon Valleydotcom culture-from beer blasts and dance parties to iceskating. Although events usually aren't mandatory, she says,managers have pressured her to show up. Sometimes the fun lastslate into the evening. Is it frustrating? "Definitely. Youhave to weigh which ones will be career-limiting if you don'tattend and which are better to skip out on," she says."Trying to juggle all this can be very stressful."

Always worried about productivity, some employers are findingroundabout ways to schedule in some fun. Catherine tells the storyof a friend who works for a small Silicon Valley dotcom. The CEOdecided employees were too stressed and hired a masseuse to come tothe office, but with one hitch: The masseuse was scheduled to comein every other Saturday, and the employees had to come to work toget their massages. "Each person in the company had toparticipate in this mandatory 'stress reduction.'Gak!" Catherine says.

Workplace fun defeats the purpose when it happens too often oredges into personal time, says Kevin Cashman, founder and CEO ofLeaderSourceInc., an executive coaching firm in Minneapolis. He sees takingfun too far as one of the pitfalls of leadership. If fun is forced,he says, then it's serving the organization and not theindividual. Leaders are imposing what they see as enjoyableactivities on employees who don't have the courage to expresstheir disinterest. "If employees are thinking it's a drag,then it becomes a leadership issue," Cashman says.

While employees at Vault participate in what Oldman calls"organized socializing," which includes happy hours,Friday night barbecues and bowling, he says it's not mandatoryto do so. Still, he realizes employees might feel obligated to putin "face time," thinking not showing up could make themlook anti-social. "I'm sure employees feel the pressure.It's wired in from sixth grade, when your friend asks ifyou're going to Mary's birthday party," he says,adding that having too many events can hurt employee morale.

But having fun can become a control issue for management, and itcan fall into a boring pattern as a result. Marston tells the storyof his job at a Washington, DC, firm where he asked the firm'sleader whether the employees could plan something instead of thetraditional party at the leader's house. The leader finallyrelented, and the employees planned a scavenger hunt around thecity, complete with limos donated by a vendor. "It was crazy,fun and cheap. It was also an idea the employer would have neverthought of," he says. What it comes down to is, whatmanagement sees as fun, employees may not.

Workers can also end up struggling to balance the company'sfun culture with its workload. When a mandatory companywideriverboat trip was looming for Imaginet's staff, the employeesin one department were suddenly stressed about meeting a crucialproject deadline. "I told them, 'If this trip meansgritting your teeth the whole time, it's elective. Besides, themost important thing around here is the work itself.' Withtheir workload, they weren't going to enjoy it anyway,"Litman says. It seems to be working. Imaginet, with annual sales ofabout $14 million, was selected last year as a "Great Place toWork" by the Twin Cities' CityBusinessmagazine.

Make Someone Happy

Fun definitely has its place, but it takes communication andfinding a balance that works for everyone. Here are some tips forhaving fun that won't leave employees frustrated:

• Have a point. Make sure events have specific purposesand are kept brief. "They have to have a specific purposeother than to kill a keg," Oldman says. Give employees time toplan ahead. At least one month's notice is best, particularlyfor employees with kids.

• Keep events limited to work hours. Does that eventreally need to be held on a Saturday afternoon? Employees see funduring the work-day as more of a perk than events that happen afterhours. They view your willingness to have fun "on theclock" as respect for their personal time, something that canbuild loyalty, not to mention better-rested employees. A daytimebaseball game on a workday, for example, feels like a treat toemployees.

• Get input from all employees. "If you've got abunch of folks whose idea of a good time is a good, hard session ofvideo gaming, don't make them go on a windsurfing trip,"Catherine says.

John O'Malley, president of Birmingham, Alabama-basedconsulting firm Strategic Visions Inc., suggests using a blindsurvey to learn the events workers enjoy and when they want to dothem.

• Don't force it. Don't make partici-pationmandatory or pressure employees to attend. If employees aren'tsticking around for fun, chances are there's something aboutthe event or the time it's scheduled that's turning themoff. O'Malley says giving employees individual "surprisedays" every so often can't hurt. "After a huge push,tell an employee that he or she doesn't have to come to worktomorrow, or offer a weekend extension," he says.

Finally, make sure applicants understand your company's funside. It'll help them decide whether your company is right forthem and keep you from hiring someone who doesn't see the funin what you're trying to do.