“A joke is a very serious thing.” – Winston Churchill
Picture this: It’s a Tuesday morning, and your boss just sent out an email with the subject line ‘Mandatory Fun: Team-Building Event at 3 PM!’ Your soul dies a little. You instinctively check your calendar for a fake conflict, but it’s too late—you’ve been voluntold to participate. Congratulations, you’re about to experience the corporate version of a forced laugh track.
But here’s the thing—laughter at work is important. It builds camaraderie, reduces stress, and makes the day suck less. The problem? When companies try to engineer fun, they often suck the joy right out of it. Let’s talk about why authentic workplace humor works and why ‘mandatory fun’ usually doesn’t.
1. Authentic Laughter Builds Connection—Forced Fun Builds Resistance
- Real humor is spontaneous. The funniest moments at work happen organically—someone misreads an email subject line, a ridiculous typo goes viral in the group chat, or the team collectively groans at a truly terrible pun.
- Forced fun feels like homework. When companies schedule laughter through team-building games that no one wants to play, they create the opposite effect. Instead of boosting morale, it makes people count down the minutes until they can escape.
Work to create an environment where humor is welcomed and feels authentic rather than orchestrated or contrived. Encourage lightheartedness, celebrate inside jokes, and let humor happen naturally.
2. The Science of Laughter: Why It Actually Matters at Work
- Laughter reduces stress. Studies show that laughter releases endorphins, lowers cortisol levels, and generally makes people feel less like they’re trapped in an existential crisis disguised as a conference room.
- Teams that laugh together work better together. As Plato put it, “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” When people share a joke, it creates an instant bond. This is why the best teams have inside jokes, shared funny stories, and a collective ability to laugh at the chaos of the job.
You don’t have to be a comedian to encourage humor. Just don’t be the person who stares blankly when someone cracks a joke – be ready to laugh! Do something else and you’ll end up killing the vibe like a human version of an email signature that says ‘Warm Regards.’
3. How to Encourage Real Humor Without Making It Weird
- Don’t weaponize humor. If your idea of ‘workplace humor’ is mocking employees or punching down, congrats—you’re fostering a culture of anxiety, not laughter.
- Lead with self-deprecating humor. When leaders joke about themselves, it lowers the power gap and makes teams feel more at ease. ‘Guess who just sent an email to the entire company with ‘Teh’ in the subject line? This guy.’
- Let humor be part of the culture, not a quarterly initiative. The best workplace humor happens in Slack threads, casual conversations, and those rare moments when someone actually says what everyone is thinking in a meeting.
Laughter at work isn’t about mandatory game days or cringeworthy icebreakers—it’s about creating an atmosphere where people feel comfortable being themselves. If you want more humor in your workplace, start by making it safe for people to laugh. Just… maybe kill the phrase Mandatory Fun.