Feature
Want To Keep Up Morale? Then Lighten Up!
By Adrian Gostick and Scott Christopher
 Ah, levity. For such a seemingly whimsical concept, it's amazing what a steaming mound of criticism it is engendering in today's business world. In the training we are conducting lately with corporate groups, we can't seem to get past the opening hellos before someone feverishly brings up the "dark side" of fun and humor in this economic climate:
"People won't take their jobs seriously."
"How will it look to our customers if we are joking around?"
"My boss tries to be funny but it's embarrassing."
After a few minutes of furrowed brows and increasingly volatile verbal exchanges, we arrive at the conclusion that we are either dead wrong about levity or we've accidentally been booked to speak at the annual meeting of Death Row Clergymen.
For many it may seem there are a thousand reasons to not write about, read about, or even think about this subject in the midst of a recession. After all, what does levity really have to do with thriving in a downturn? And just as we're ready to surrender our mission to the scoffs, derision and upturned schnozzes, we discover the best excuses to continue pursuing the topic: The converted.
These loyal levity believers swim upstream through the flow of conference attendees exiting after we have concluded our presentations, nodding their heads and shaking our hands as if we're the handle on the last water pump in the Sahara. "Thank goodness you came, that was fantastic," they'll say. "My colleagues really needed to hear this message; we're so bad at keeping up morale."
As champions of fun at work, they are among the growing number of people who chose to lead with the Levity Effect. And thankfully for us, they aren't just a few nuts relegated to back-office jobs … or HR. They are usually some of the most successful, trusted, innovative people in their organizations. They are the living proof that levity is a real, positive and valuable business practice.
And here's what they've discovered: As we ask employees to do more with less, fun at work can provide a competitive advantage, help retain key employees, and provide the spark to jumpstart great ideas. Sure, it may be hard to measure the return on investment of go-cart outings, dress-up contests, or a perfectly timed punchline, but the leaders we interviewed for our book The Levity Effect attest that fun is an essential component of their people, business, and innovation strategies. In short, people tend to give more energy to an organization where good times are injected into work.
Not only that, but managers who lead with levity benefit from higher levels of employee engagement and personal financial success. Chances are excellent that you've known a leader like this at some point in your career. Maybe you had a boss who was genuinely funny, cracking an hilarious comment now and then to loosen everyone up. Or maybe, and more likely, you had a boss who wasn't that much of a punster or a quick quip artist, but she encouraged the group to get a little silly once in a while. In other words, she may not have been Paula Poundstone, but she was authentic, genuine, and light-hearted and she let people be themselves.
And at its core, that's what levity is about. It's not only about having fun at work and letting off some steam. It's not just about being humorous. It's not so much about being funny, it's about being fun.
Grab your spoon, here comes the puddin'
It may be hard to believe that a warm and fuzzy subject such as fun could impact an organization's success. But the remarkable case for levity at work is growing, with the most convincing numbers culled from more than a decade of research by the Great Place to Work® Institute. Data from the organization's 1-million person research database reveals that "Great" companies consistently earn significantly higher marks for "fun."
Each year, the Great Place to Work® Institute asks tens of thousands of employees to rate their experience of workplace factors including, "This is a fun place to work." On Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For® list, produced by the Great Place to Work® Institute, employees in companies that are denoted as "great" responded overwhelmingly-an average of 81 percent-that they are working in a "fun" environment. That's a compelling statistic: employees at the best companies are also having the best time. At the "good" companies-those that apply for inclusion but do not make the top 100-only 62 employees out of 100 say they are having fun. That gap in experience is, surprisingly, one of the largest in the survey.
Need more evidence?
As we all know, turnover can cost organizations millions every year in lost productivity, recruiting costs and other expenses. In fact, the University of California Berkley estimates that turnover for each employee is 150 percent of salary. While many companies don't seem worried about turnover right now since their statistics have fallen, they seem to forget that the few people that are leaving are almost always top performers who have options.
At our request, international research firm Ipsos conducted a 1,000-person national survey of working adults to measure the affect a manager's sense of humor has on employee retention. In the survey, participants were asked to rate their bosses' sense of humor, and in another part of this general consumer survey they were asked how likely it was that they would be working for their employer a year from now.
The Ipsos research numbers show that employees who rate their managers' sense of humor as "above average" (a score of 7-10), rate the likelihood that they will be on the job a year from now at almost 90 percent (8.96 out of 10). But those employees who rated their managers' sense of humor as "average" or "below average" on sense of humor rate their chances of staying at only about 77.5 percent.
According to Tim Keiningham, senior vice president of Ipsos Loyalty, "The connection is not an anomaly. There is a statistically significant correlation between your manager's sense of humor and your willingness to remain with an organization."
So, what is levity?
In short, levity means being light, buoyant even. The problem is, that doesn't sound very desirable in the business world. After all, who wants a lightweight, bouncy, goof-off handling finances, piloting their plane, or addressing issues with upset customers? It's no wonder that fun gets a bad rap.
But levity doesn't mean silly or inane. It doesn't mean distracting. Levity is a way of improving a workplace, a presentation or a relationship that can change our work and our lives for the better. And in a time when we are all looking for a competitive edge, that has to be good news.
The word itself is derived from Latin, levitas, the same root for the word levitate. And that's the secret to levity. It raises things. And while in a business setting, some people may distrust it, when things get tense, drab, slow, stressful and boring, a fork-full of levity can mean the difference between working cohesively towards a goal and being hindered by contention.
 Of course, we make no claims that levity will fix a toxic culture, make up for poor pay practices, improve your products or make your workplace safe. If you lack any of those basics, fix those first.
But the good news is most organizations we visit have the basics down. They are simply looking for something more to give them the competitive advantage. Something that provides a differentiator in today's competitive markets. They're looking for an edge.
So go ahead and lighten up.
New York Times bestselling writers Adrian Gostick and Scott Christopher are authors of the new book The Levity Effect. Learn more at www.levityeffect.com.
To the top! | Back To Features
|
|
|
|