Humor in the Workplace: If All You Do when You Go to Work Is Work, You Need to Lighten Up!

by Terrill Fischer and Ann Fry

Do you realize that you spend more hours at work every day than you do with your significant other, your kids or anyone else for that matter? So, if you spend all those hours with all those people at work, wouldn't you like it to be a more fun, uplifting , satisfying experience?

Remember the saying, "Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone?" Are you spending your day laughing or are you spending your day crying? Are you getting up each morning and saying, "Wow, I love what I do." Or "I can't wait to get to work today?" or are you saying, "Ugh, another day in that (blankety, blank) place?"

I'm going to be a bit unconventional here and suggest that you begin looking at the workplace and the workday in a different way. I'm suggesting that if your employees are happy and have a full, rich, fun, balanced life, then, your department/agency will function at peak performance. Now, perhaps you have never quite thought of happiness as a desired characteristic of your employees; but if I told you that happy employees are more productive employees, would that be of interest to you?

I'd like to invite you to reconsider — expand your paradigm-to look at what it means to have happy employees. Then, once we've determined the benefits of having satisfied/happy employees, we'll explore how to make the workplace more fun or humorous.

When characteristics of fun are apparent, what you'll notice in the workplace is that your employees:

• contribute to the productivity of your agency
  
• have your interests in mind-are loyal
  
• are more creative and show more motivation
  
• look forward to rising each morning, facing the day with enthusiasm and pitching in wholeheartedly

Time to "lighten up!"

Think of the buzzwords we use and the issues we face in the work world entering the year 2000: change, stress, downsizing, doing more with less, re-engineering, conflict. Employees complain of not being understood or appreciated, of not feeling a sense of purpose about or a true connection with their work, and not having a voice to register with their company. The result of all this is substance abuse, high absenteeism, high job turnover, violence, physical and emotional illness and the subsequent "off the chart" cost of health care.

The first step toward creating an environment where your employees will feel happy at work is to select a "designated fun person"-someone who is normally a happy, fun and playful person. Then, ask that person to select a workplace fun committee. Then, let the committee create your fun workplace. A fun workplace is one where employees can be openly lighthearted. They can laugh out loud, even in the hallways, they can post funny pictures and cartoons and have contests. They can have "dress down" days and "theme" days. They can have toys on their desks and music in their offices. They can have secret pals and give surprise gifts to each other. They can bring their pet dogs, cats or fish to work and even to meetings.

They can have a breakroom that really gives them a break — with paints and easels, audio tapes, funny videos, comic books and more-so they return to their desks refreshed and ready to work. Our motto is, "the company that plays together, stays together!" The truth is that happy employees are productive employees. It's that simple! As stated above, the qualities of rapport-building, communication and connectedness are what's desired in today's workplace. Thus, we need skills like: thinking outside the box, brainstorming, teambuilding, creating results, cooperation, flexibility. All of these skills are encompassed in the skills of improvisation — the art of being spontaneous. Humor produces many benefits. It frees communication, changes perspective, empowers, acts as a connector, decreases tension and it facilitates learning and performing.

What kind of workplace do you want? Think about it.

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