Magic circles of work and play: How immersive play sustains work engagement

Achieving work engagement needed for creative problem-solving is challenging. Sustaining it during the arduous and frustrating creative process is even more difficult. Breaks help, but they are not a panacea as they mostly help with tasks demanding low work engagement. During an inductive study of a creative organization, we found that a new type of play we call immersive play – intense, voluntary, enjoyable, and non-work related – was integrated in the work process. Our emergent findings show how immersive play facilitated work engagement by reinvigorating people. Specifically, immersive play fostered strong positive emotions, facilitated physical release, and generated a feeling of momentum. We also show how this high-intensity dynamic, (i.e., engaged work alternating with immersive play) was associated with creative problem solving. At the same time, immersive play could also be distracting to coworkers who had to devise particular strategies to protect their work engagement from surrounding noise and disruption. Our work offers a richer, more complete understanding of work engagement, the creative work process, and the role of play in contemporary organizations.