By Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey

No one will argue with the fact that workplaces have become more casual, more connected, more innovative, and more flexible. But have they become fun? Maybe so, or at least that’s what younger employees (and more experienced employees, too) hope to find when they settle into their cubicles.

According to a 2015 report from Accenture,1 60 percent of graduates from the class of 2015 said they would take a pay cut to work for an organization that had a positive social atmosphere.

Most employers don’t actually need to see the results of a study to know that a positive, even fun, company culture is a deciding factor for people who are entering the job market. Since millennials now account for the largest share of the U.S. workforce, employers need to take this generation’s expectations seriously—even if they themselves are members of the “it’s called work for a reason” camp.

Don’t worry, you won’t have to put in a basketball court or bowling alley, but actually, injecting a little more fun into your organization will benefit everyone.

It’s a myth that productivity improves when company cultures are rigid, serious, and businesslike. The reality is, productivity improves when people enjoy being at work and enjoy the work they’re doing, regardless of the decade in which they were born.

Here are six components of a positive workplace culture:

Fun. While going to work might not ever beat a day on vacation, it’s still possible to make time at the office enjoyable. When possible, allow employees to work in highly collaborative teams and make group work areas available. Give these teams clear goals and celebrate when they’re accomplished. You might even want to introduce a little friendly competition.

Beyond that, strive to create a fun environment. At our organization, we designed colorful work spaces with natural light and graphics. We let employees choose their own titles. We also gave plenty of time off, celebrated birthdays, and didn’t mind a little silliness as long as the work got done. We subsequently found that all of this helped employees stay fresh and involved, and it kept morale high.

Respect. Yes, new millennial hires will be the low people on your organization’s totem pole. But that doesn’t mean they can be treated dismissively or viewed as a cost. No one, regardless of age or experience, will enjoy coming to work if they aren’t treated with respect and viewed as an asset.

A good way to show employees respect is to create a know-the-need culture instead of sticking to a need-to-know policy. Practice transparency. Share company challenges and ask the entire staff for solutions. Employees are full of intelligence, ideas, and passion, and you may be surprised by their ideas. Be sure to recognize outstanding performance and acknowledge accomplishments publicly.

Philanthropy. A 2014 report by consulting firm Achieve2 revealed that not only do millennials think it’s important to give back to their communities, 57 percent would actually like to see their employers offer more companywide volunteer opportunities.

It’s a good idea for your organization to stand for more than “just” the mercantile value of its goods and services. All of your employees, regardless of their age, will be proud to work for a organization that’s committed to a better world. (And if some of them share the good deeds on social media, so much the better.)

From the start, we aligned our organization with several social causes, including local parks, civil rights, and environmentalism, which we had felt strongly about long before creating the work group. Even when we didn’t have cash to spare, we still donated bottles of wine and encouraged our employees to volunteer for partner organizations on company time. Knowing that their work was governed by a higher set of principles gave employees a higher sense of purpose and increased their engagement, morale, and loyalty.

Flex hours. If your company has a rigid attendance policy, we ask you to seriously consider: Why? Thanks to technology, many of today’s jobs don’t require employees to be in the office, at their desks, from nine to five. And believe it or not, almost half of millennials say they’d choose flexibility over pay.3

Employees feel positively about companies that give them time to live their lives outside of work when possible. Set up deadline-based timetables rather than strict work schedules, and allow for home-office work as much as possible. This will help your people save gas and commute hours. Think of it as paying for performance, not attendance.

We found that when we trusted people to do what their jobs required and left the when and where up to them, they were more focused and productive. They thought like entrepreneurs, not clock punchers.

Appreciation. When employees work hard on your company’s behalf, they deserve your thanks and appreciation. Don’t take it for granted, for example, when employees put in extra hours or turn out an incredibly well-thought-out proposal. Make sure they know that you have noticed their efforts. For that matter, don’t even take it for granted that they show up every day. (As the economy continues to improve, employees have an increasingly wide array of potential employers to choose from!)

A great way to build team spirit and nurture a positive culture is to send out written acknowledgments or make an announcement when a person does something that positively affects business. We did this on each employee’s anniversary. Not only does saying “thank you” as publicly as possible give individual employees the warm fuzzies, it causes the whole team to gain more respect for their coworkers.

Family. Accenture’s report also revealed that only 15 percent of 2015 grads “prefer” to work for a large organization. Today’s employees want to be known and treated as individuals, not merely as human capital or cogs in the proverbial machine. They value kinship, shared values, and being part of a supportive group that has one another’s best interests at heart. They want to feel proud of their team and look forward to the company of the group with whom they spend the majority of their waking hours.

All of the advice we’ve shared here can help create a workplace family. In addition, we recommend setting up a mentorship program. When a new employee begins work, try to match up the individual with a more experienced worker who can advise, teach, challenge, and encourage the person. Mentoring relationships are a win-win because they guarantee that valuable institutional knowledge is passed on while knitting a team more closely together.

Shouldn’t work be fun anyway? Isn’t that when we all do our best work? Isn’t that the fertile ground that allows the best solutions and disruptive ideas to grow? And isn’t that the basis of company loyalty? With the right people in the right environment, your local government organization will be more likely to hit its numbers and provide the services that residents need and want.

1 http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/12/pf/millennials-work/index.html?iid=HP_LN.

2 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/18/millennials-volunteer-charity-giving_n_5507778.html.

3 http://www.forbes.com/sites/katetaylor/2013/08/23/why-millennials-are-ending-the-9-to-5/.