The ‘F’ word (fun) – Proven Stats on the Increase in Productivity When Humour is Welcomed in the Workplace
Even in 2021 we still have leaders who are reluctant to use fun in the workplace as a leadership and development tool.
There’s still a hangover from the early days of the industrial revolution where workers were controlled and observed, and later, factory lines designed for production meant people were treated the same as the machines, expected to pump out increasing quantities of goods.
The bosses office would have large windows overlooking the factory floor and if anyone was seen to be distracted - or even worse, laughing - they were disciplined, seen as timewasters, and possibly docked wages for perceived loss of productivity.
And yet, there’s nothing new under the sun. Different forms of fun have been used for thousands of years to make work lighter, engage staff, and connect teams. As human beings we’re hardwired to connect in this way, and we fail to see the value of the fun factor at our own organisation’s’ peril.
Music
Workers have sung together for millennia to pass the time to make boring or difficult jobs easier.
In the 1940s psychological research in the UK saw the benefit of music for production line workers.
With the need to increase production and a spirit of a connected community, music was used as a soundtrack to deliberately shape workers feelings and behaviours on the production lines in factories.
It was established that music could raise employees' work rates, increase their efficiency, combat fatigue and boredom, improve morale, and even heighten emotions and increase loyalty. The culmination of all of this was the BBC Radio program Music While You Work, broadcast daily to millions of British factory workers from 1940 until 1967. (1)
Fun at work helped the war effort!
We’re not at war now, but with the COVID-19 pandemic still making its way through our communities we need fun at work more than ever.
Humour
By now we know that humour in the workplace is an all-round winner.
It humanises us, builds trust between colleagues through authenticity, enhances creative thinking, boosts morale, and increases productivity.
Plenty of scientific research confirms that humour is good for us. Dr Rod Martin’s work found that humour has essentially four aspects that directly result in increased creative thinking, wellbeing, engagement and team building:
To get humour we need to have the capacity to entertain incongruity and be playful with our thinking
Humour’s emotional aspect, mirth, activates pleasure circuits in the limbic system as well as various autonomic and endocrine responses, which is what makes humour enjoyable.
The social or interpersonal aspect of humour means it possibly evolved as a mechanism for enhancing group cohesion.
Laughter, the hard-wired nonverbal expression of the emotion of mirth lets others know we are experiencing mirth and generates the emotion in the listener.
So why do we avoid deliberately using it?
Aggressive and racy stand-up comedy performers have given humour an edgy, unsafe air. In addition, there continues to be confusion between humour and comedy which are two very different things, and how to effectively apply humour in the workplace.
Humour arises out of everyday events and is grounded in shared experience. When used in teams, it creates a shorthand, localised vocabulary and in doing so engages and binds those teams.
Comedy, on the other hand, is a performance – almost transactional - and its sole objective is laughter.
A few simple rules mean most of the pitfalls can be avoided:
Keep it inclusive – share the joke or the activity with everyone in the group
Keep it clean – we are at work, after all
Don’t punch down (i.e. don’t make punchlines out of people who are already vulnerable or marginalised).
Ways to incorporate fun in your workplace:
Create a ‘Friday funny’ group post on your team’s Teams site and encourage staff to post their favourite joke or GIF based on a theme
Establish a ‘Funny file’ on your Teams site where all staff can share funny real life on-the-job stories
Play games or competitions that use creativity to add joy and laughter to the workday
Set up social groups based on shared out-of-hours interests – sport, music, art etc to allow staff to share fun personal hobbies and experiences
Ensure leadership teams are actively involved in setting the standard for sharing humour in the workplace
By thinking carefully on how to generate an atmosphere of fun in the workplace you’ll build a loyal, well and productive workforce who will be your best ambassadors in the world of business, recruitment and retention.