Perceived Benefits of Humour at Work

INTRODUCTION
An article on the Stanford Graduate School of Business website entitled ‘Humor is Serious Business’, highlighted the perceived benefits of humour in occupational settings. It suggests that humour can improve wellbeing, reduce stress, build better teams, increase status, and impact on the ‘bottom line’. However these observations are based on a limited range of studies, over a large period of time, and often with small sample sizes.

This study looks at some of these (and other) perceived benefits of humour in occupational settings, involving a wide range of employees and a very large dataset.

BACKGROUND
Humour has been associated in scientific literature with a number of perceived benefits, both physical and psychological. While there is some evidence of physical benefits, the evidence is not always conclusive. There is greater evidence for psychological benefits usually associated with humour styles (Romero & Cruthirds 2006).

There are believed to be four styles (the first two adaptive, the second two maladaptive):
• affiliative humour – used to strengthen interpersonal relationships or ease tension within these relationships
• self-enhancing humour – used to improve your perceived position by way of a humorous outlook
• aggressive humour – the use of sarcasm or putting others down
• self-defeating humour – the use of self-depreciating tactics for the employment of others

Higher levels of adaptive humour are found to be related to lower levels of depression and higher self-esteem, and self-defeating humour with poorer psychological health (Martin, 2003). Kuiper and McHale (2009) found support for humour styles being mediators between self-evaluation and psychological well-being. Later work by Crawford & Caltabiano (2011) found support for humour as an intervention which may increase positive aspects of emotional well-being, including self-efficacy, optimism, locus of control, and positive affect.

Studies such as Romero & Cruthilds (2006) and Avolio et al (1999) highlight the importance and perceived effectiveness of humour in leadership communication in the workplace while Romero & Pescosolido (2008) and Yip and Martin (2006) support the effectiveness of humour in team building.

THE STUDY
This study started back in 2015 with an internal employee engagement survey. One recurring trend in written feedback from employees was the use of humour to deal with stressful situations at work.


On the basis of this, and trends in team building and leadership research which mentioned the importance of humour, five questions looking at humour at work were placed in an experimental employee engagement survey known as WorkTrends 1which has been administered annually or biannually since 1985.

The first four of the questions looked at adaptive styles and were combined to form a single humour index, and a single question was asked which examined Aggressive humour.
• When things go wrong at work, I usually make jokes to ease the tension
• I like to make my co-workers laugh, because it helps me deal with day-to-day stressors at work
• I tend to laugh at my problems at work
• I often smile through my frustrations to get through my work day
AND
• I like to make fun of my co-workers when they are not around

The intention of the study was to look at humour and its relationship to a range of variables with a very large group of participants with a wide spread in terms of age/generation, geographical location, educational level, job level, and industry. Accordingly, the study divided the into three parts:

Part 1: What are the relative strengths (and differences in strength) of preferences for using humour at work across a range of demographic variables (including Gender, Age/Generation, Educational Level)

Part 2: Does the level of humour used at work show differences in signs of well-being such as number of Sick Days, lateness, unexcused absence, and self-perceived stress levels

Part 3: Does the level of humour used at work show differences in terms of job satisfaction, turnover intentions, relative job success (job level)

METHOD
A group of 238952 took the WorkTrends survey online which had a total of 196 questions arranged into a wide range of sections. The relevant sections for this study were Humour at Work, Employee Engagement, Turnover, Work Stress, and various screening and demographic variables. A group of approximately 3250 took all of these sections, and this formed the sample for Parts 1, 2, and 3 of the study.

The differences between the groups in Part 1 were analysed using simple t-tests or ANOVAs with post-hoc comparison tests.

The differences between the groups in Part 2 were analysed using simple correlations, and simple t-tests and/or ANOVAs with post-hoc comparison tests, depending on the nature of the variables involved.

The differences between the groups in Part 3 were analysed using simple correlations, and simple t-tests and/or ANOVAs with post-hoc comparison tests, depending on the nature of the variables involved.

FINDINGS
Part 1: Comparison of strength of preference for using humour at work across demographic variables

There were significant Generational differences with Millennials scoring higher than Boomers and Generation X.

There were significant Gender differences with Males scoring higher

There were significant Educational Level differences with Graduates and professionally-qualified individuals outscoring non-Graduates

Part 2: Relationship between use of humour and signs of well-being

Positive significant correlations between Use of Humour and Sick Days (i.e. more Sick Days), Lateness (i.e. more Lateness), and Stress (i.e. lower stress),

Part 3: Relationship between use of humour and signs of engagement and success

Positive significant correlations between Use of Humour and Job Satisfaction (i.e. more engaged), and Turnover Intentions (i.e. more likely to quit)

There were significant Job Level differences with Executives and other managers scoring higher than non-Managers. Executives scored highest.

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS
The expected benefits of use of humour were not clearly established in this study but it does highlight differences based on demographic variables, and greater use of humour by more senior (in terms of job level) individuals.

Those using more Humour at work were less stressed but this cannot be seen as causative (i.e. there is no reason to believe the use of humour is resulting in less stress).

Also despite showing greater levels of engagement, those using more Humour at work were more likely to quit.

We will explore these issues in more detail in the next few months.
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1 WorkTrends uses a panel of participants recruiting using website banner advertisements and links, enabling potential panellists to “opt--in.” Panellists are authenticated and provide demographic information that enables researchers to select individuals into a pool of qualified participants from which the random sample for this study is drawn. The current panel has more than 3 million participants. Respondents cannot take the survey more than once, and serial responders who answer surveys too quickly or too consistently (e.g. giving the same answer to all questions) are removed from the study’s data and from the panel.