Humour at work

While humour is often associated with leisure rather than work, the truth is that humour can be found everywhere people are, even in situations where laughter may not seem appropriate.

At the workplace, employees, employers, and customers all engage in humor.

Of course, not everyone participates at the same time, but humor has a unifying, solidifying effect that brings people closer together. Every workplace and profession has their own inside jokes, a secret code, and only the members of a particular community can fully understand certain jokes. To decipher such inside humour, one needs both knowledge and experience. Sometimes, a lack of understanding of a single word or an inside reference can be enough to keep someone from understanding what a particular group finds amusing.

An example of this is medical humor. Doctors often laugh about the Krebs cycle. Knowing what the Krebs cycle is may not be sufficient; one must also understand that in medical memes, it has become a symbol of not just something difficult to learn but also unnecessary knowledge.

Being invited to the inside humour of a professional group means being part of that community.

This type of humor helps shape professional identity. Workplace humor doesn't necessarily have to relate to one's profession; you can make jokes about anything, especially since today we have various ways to share humour, not just by telling jokes out loud. We send memes, share posts, gifs, and sometimes show funny videos on our phones. This makes humor spread quickly and easy to modify.

Humor can also serve as a ritual for welcoming new employees. Such an "initiation" can be a great opportunity for integration and may create unique memories. One of the more interesting functions of humour is its ability to ease conflicts. Sometimes, humour can defuse tension at work, solve a problem, or even end a conflict. For instance, you can organise a contest for the "longest squint" a stapler-throwing competition into a trash can, an elevator acrobatics challenge, or a contest for the "most interesting office blunders of the year."

Furthermore, humour allows us to deal with workplace stress on a daily basis and helps prevent burnout.

Notice that the more challenging the working conditions or the more responsibility a job entails, the more frequently dark humour is used. In certain fields like law enforcement, medicine, or firefighting, dark humour is the norm. However, outside of specific circles and contexts, it may be considered disgusting, hardcore, or an extreme form of humor.

Through humor, employees can learn a lot about each other and strengthen their bonds or, conversely, maintain a safe distance, at least for the length of a desk.

Humour also reflects workplace relationships.

Imagine entering an office as a customer and seeing all the laughter and smiles vanish when the boss appears. It immediately creates a stifling atmosphere. What does this say about the relationships in that office? On the other hand, employees spending their breaks with their boss, sharing the latest memes, joking with each other and their boss, and anyone who happens to join in – what does that say about their relationships?

In the workplace, humour reveals a certain hierarchy and discloses who sides with whom and who's opposed to whom. Where, when, how, and with whom employees engage in humour says a lot about the organization. For instance, if you notice that no one in a particular office smiles, and every attempt at humor is met with nervous shushing from other employees, run away from that place as fast as you can, even if it means catching the first bus to Alaska, and never come back. On the other hand, if you've got a job where funny quotes from the boss and employees decorate the walls and are visible to customers, never, ever leave that job.