Healthy humour: Using humour to cope at work

Abstract

Humour offers relief from boredom in the workplace and is an important facet of working life. Sharing humour at work can build relationships, create positive affect, and improve camaraderie between colleagues. Workplace humour is an under-researched topic and there is little empirical research that has explored humour in real workplace settings. This paper presents new qualitative empirical data from a 3 year study investigating the influence of humour within organisational culture. Analyses are drawn from observations that recorded verbatim humour exchanges as well as from interviews with managers and subordinates from four New Zealand companies. The paper explores the idea that enacting and enjoying humour at work may contribute to workplace well-being. Using humour at work may constitute a positive coping strategy that helps people to manage stress and strain experienced at work. Data suggest that humour is used specifically to offer relief from tension, to help deal with adversity and difficult situations, and to soften directives and requests made to colleagues and subordinates. © The Royal Society of New Zealand 2009.