This company pays employees to play pickleball: 'Work should be fun' – CNBC

Some people look forward to their lunch break or 3 p.m. coffee at the office — but Liz Martin eagerly awaits her afternoon pickleball match against her co-workers. Martin, 28, works at Room & Board, a Minneapolis-based furniture retailer with an indoor pickleball court on the first floor of its office building. Every other Tuesday at noon, Martin, a merchandising and design specialist, spends an hour on the court before jumping into back-to-back meetings.”I never thought I’d be into pickleball, but now, it’s one of my favorite parts of the day,” says Martin, who started playing pickleball a year ago.Room & Board installed the court in 2013 to complement its in-house gym. Although the sport has been a consistent favorite among employees since the court was first unveiled, its popularity has skyrocketed in the past two years, says Nancy Manley, Room & Board’s chief people officer.Pickleball, a combination of tennis, badminton and ping pong, was invented in 1965 but experienced an unexpected boom during the Covid-19 pandemic. People flocked to the low-cost paddle sport as a safe way to enjoy the outdoors, but its popularity has outlasted the pandemic. Soon after Room & Board began calling employees back to the office in the
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