Humour in the workplace.. is it a laughing matter?

The awards celebrate the business that makes life the most fun for its staff, suppliers and/or customers. And why not?  With most of us spending more and more time in the office, having a laugh with your boss, cracking a joke with your colleagues, or reading a Dilbert cartoon can make work a lot more bearable.

Throughout history, humans have used humour to cope with tense, dangerous or repetitive situations. The concept of ‘gallows humour’ came from the dark jokes made by prisoners waiting for their turn to hang – a bleak time if ever there was one!

In the modern workplace, gallows humour, black humour, sarcasm, or just a plain old belly laugh can help you psychologically detach yourself from the stress of a performance assessment or the boredom of that 6 hour planning meeting.

And defusing a situation with humour is good for your heath. Medical evidence has shown humour can reduce anxiety, lower blood pressure, boost the auto-immune system and improve respiration. The rise of ‘laughter yoga’ and other humour related activities as a part of corporate wellbeing programs testifies to the increasing recognition of humour as a positive feature of the modern workplace.

Joking around with your colleagues can also be a great way of bonding. Inside jokes, light hearted teasing and office banter create what experts call a ‘shared system of understandings’ - making those involved feel accepted and part of the group, and hopefully, improving team work and overall performance.

Of course, there’s also a serious side to workplace humour. Your job could be on the line if your boss or co-workers don’t ‘get’ your jokes – what seems hilarious to one person can be extremely offensive to another. Excluding people from jokes, intentionally or not, can alienate outsiders and create tensions within a workplace. Humour can veil targeted bullying and can reinforce power dynamics and subordination in a workplace.

Thankfully, in the modern workplace, the excuse that ‘it was a joke, they just didn’t get it’ seems to becoming less accepted . Sexual humour which reinforces gendered relations in the workplace and humour which stereotypes racial groups can contravene the Public Service Code of Conduct and are routinely investigated as discriminatory by external bodies such as the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission.

Have your say:
Have you got a David Brent-style boss or witnessed a workplace joke that went horribly wrong? Does laughter decrease your stress at work and help you bond with your colleagues?  Or do you find in-jokes really annoying? Have you ever been to a laughter yoga class or group humour session? What are your experiences of humour in the workplace? Please leave a comment below.