Workplace Fun, Organizational Inclusion and Meaningful Work: an Empirical Study

Purpose – This paper addresses nurses working in public hospitals in order to find out how workplace fun may affect their perception of both organizational inclusion and meaningful work. Moreover, and given the novelty of organizational inclusion (OI) and meaningful work, more specifically in the context of developing countries, the authors explore the relationship between OI and meaningful work.

Design/ methodology/ approach – A total of 360 questionnaires were collected from nurses in public hospitals in Egypt. The authors used SmartPLS 3 since it has less restrictions regarding complex models, non-normal data, small samples and is appropriate for higher-order constructs (Hair et al., 2017).

Findings – The findings show that workplace fun has positive effects on organizational inclusion and meaningful work for nurses. Moreover, organizational inclusion positively affects meaningful work for nurses.

Research limitations/ implications – This study focuses on a single sector (health care) in one country and addresses one job category (nurses). Future studies could consider other sectors in other countries, and other job categories to generalise the results.

Practical implications – The authors suggest that the administrations of public hospitals include workplace fun as a part of their values and strategies. This ensures a sustained policy for implementing fun activities (e.g. performance and recognition awards, social gatherings, etc.). Moreover, the sense of dignity and respect among nurses requires the effective adoption of organizational inclusion. This prompts the authors to ask why hospitals do not implement organizational inclusion, fun, and meaningfulness management units. Answering this question will have a positive impact on the performance, loyalty, commitment, and citizenship behaviour among nurses.

Originality/ value – This paper contributes to filling a gap in HR research in the health care sector, where empirical studies on the relationships between workplace fun, organizational inclusion, and meaningful work have been scarce or at least limited so far.