Want to use more humor to celebrate National Humor Month? Here’s the top ten things you need to know about humor in the workplace, whether you’re working in a hospital, a long term care facility, a school, or any of the other places nurses call ‘the office’.
1. Humor is in the eye of the beholder. Set boundaries of what is appropriate and what is not, because what some people find humorous, others will find offensive. Parameters of acceptable behaviors can be in the form of official written policies, but you want to be aware of your colleague’s verbal and non verbal communications. If you’re in a supervisory position, don’t forget to model the appropriate use of humor.
2. Keep it clean and kind. Therapeutic humor is humor that lifts the spirit and creates positive feelings. Avoid hurtful, embarrassing humor — if you’re the one who just went sliding through a spill of unidentified green goop, it’s okay to laugh. But if another nurse does it? You might want to see how she’s reacting, first.
3. Make it fun. Humor at work is part attitude, part action. Use humor as a way to create an inclusive environment. Create situations where you can make your fellow nurses laugh — and any time you can bring patients in on the fun, go for it. This creates a lot of positive energy in your workspace, and helps you gain a better understanding of the people you work with every day.
4. Share the fun responsibility. Be pro-active about making your unit a fun place to work. Share the ‘workload’ and assign jobs to like minded colleagues. Ask one person to keep an eye out for funny cartoons, another to share the latest funny joke they read online. Make the atmosphere fun and inclusive so everyone feels encouraged to participate.
5. Make time for laughter If there’s one thing that’s perpetually in short supply in a nurse’s life, it’s time. Make a commitment to take a minute out of the day for laughter and build from there as time and circumstances permit. If you’re in an administrative role, incorporate humor into the daily routine. Carve out time to schedule events where humor plays a role. This will do wonders for team morale and retention.
6. Make humor a priority. Humor can not and should not be the top priority in our day. We have patients to care for, and that’s that. But it is important to remember that we’re treating the whole person, not merely the presenting complaint. Considering the emotional and mental state of our patients requires the therapeutic use of humor whenever possible as a non-invasive, no cost nursing intravention with no side effects. (Unless the stitches are fresh…you might not want to provoke belly laughs then.)
7. Find what’s funny in everyday life You don’t have to BE funny to SEE funny. Spontaneous humor is as important, and possibly even more therapeutic, than formal efforts to incorporate it into people’s lives at work. One of the best ways to start is to find opportunities to laugh at yourself. Remember to be kind to yourself: this should be a positive exercise.
8. Balance responsibility. Organizations and individuals need to be equally accountable for making right versus wrong choices. This accountability doesn’t only come from the top down, and nursing in particular is in dire need of peer-to-peer acknowledgment and cessation of negative behavior. We don’t have to eat our young — they deliver pizzas now! Don’t let nastiness masquerading as humor go unchecked. Advocate for yourself, your patients, and your colleagues.
9. Nip it in the bud. Discriminatory jokes should be met with immediate reprimand. This is vital to protect patients — imagine being the patient who belongs to the social group being joked about! — and a safe, secure work environment. Management and supervisors don’t want to deal with the threat of litigation, and no one wants a hostile work environment.
10. Measure success. Look for laughs. Look on a regular basis. Sensitize yourself to the mood of your team. Are your fellow nurses smiling and laughing? Obviously, humor won’t be on display 24/7, 365 days a year, even though that’s the normal ‘hours of operation’ for most of us. But there should be some signs of humor working. If not, adjustments are in order!
Overall, the best approach a company can have is to appreciate what humor can bring to a business and the people in it while at the same time maintaining a healthy respect and sensitivity for its power to hurt or heal. Happy people make a happy workplace and a happy workplace produces positive results.
