How workplace fun is experienced in the banking sector? A qualitative study

Purpose This paper aims to investigate how workplace fun is experienced in two public Egyptian banks by addressing the employees working there. Design/methodology/approach To investigate workplace fun in the selected banks, the author employed virtual ethnographic field research by spending two weeks (virtually and full-time) inside each of the two selected public banks. Besides this virtual ethnographic experience, the author employed semi-structured interviews and focus groups with the bank employees. Moreover, the author digitally examined documents such as posters, cartoons, brochures and a WhatsApp group. A total of 188 respondents were contacted and involved in eight semi-structured interviews and 36 focus groups. All interviews and focus groups were conducted in Arabic, the mother tongue of all respondents. The author subsequently used thematic analysis to determine the main ideas in the transcripts. Findings The findings confirmed that workplace fun has not been carefully understood, developed and sustained in the selected public Egyptian banks. To the best of the author's knowledge, this study is the first of its kind in the context of a developing nation to focus on workplace fun, and subsequently, it is the first to address the banking sector in one of the leading developing nations in Africa and the Middle-East. Furthermore, based on the analysis of the focus groups and interviews the author created a model of four obstacles: work environment realities, managerial practices, bank-related behaviour and meaning-related obstacles. Managing those four obstacles secures a relevant foundation on which banks can develop and maintain a systematic implementation of workplace fun and humour. Originality/value This paper contributes by filling a gap in HR management, in which empirical studies on workplace fun have been limited so far.