“Work” and “fun” – two words you do not often find in the same sentence. Is it OK to have fun at work if you are in the business of providing therapeutic services? The answer is “yes,” if you want to work with a more productive team, increase patient satisfaction, improve staff recruitment and retention, and increase overall job satisfaction. Even though we take our jobs seriously, we need to also remember to take ourselves lightly.

Symptoms of Stress

What keeps you from having fun at work? Is it the stress associated with your job? Since stress is an internal response to an external event, you need to change the way that you react to stress if you cannot change the cause. A common reaction to stress is tense muscles, causing sore neck, back or shoulder muscles.

Other times, your body has a more “in the moment” reaction to stress. In these cases, your breathing becomes rapid and shallow, which results in less oxygen intake for your body and an increased heart rate. If you experience these symptoms occasionally, it might not be a big deal. However, if these signs are prolonged, other health issues start emerging.

Chronic stress-induced muscle tension can result in muscle spasms, cramping, jaw pain, teeth grinding, headaches, and chest and back pain. Stress is also considered a major risk factor for heart disease, along with smoking, being overweight and lack of exercise.

Unfortunately, stress is a part of life and is often self-induced. Reducing our stress really means that we need to change how we view stressful situations. One way to reduce stress is to learn to balance stress with the pleasures in your life. Aspects of your job should make you smile, laugh or just feel good, but there are, of course, parts of the job that cause you stress.

Finding the right balance of stress and pleasure will help you to be more productive and energized. Taking work too seriously will increase your stress levels – so lighten up! Humor can help your body overcome the negative physical reactions to stress.

Learning to Laugh

Using humor to reduce stress at work helps keep things in perspective and encourages a team to work together. Humor at work is not just about telling jokes and funny stories – it is about having fun performing your job and creating a fun work environment.

A fun environment will help motivate staff, encourage team building, improve communication, increase productivity and staff retention, and reduce conflicts and overall stress in the department. It’s OK to laugh and enjoy your job. Laughter and humor will help you live longer and healthier, as well.

Did you know that when you laugh, your heart rate goes down and your muscles relax? When you are experiencing a true belly laugh, your muscles tighten; then, as you come out of the laugh, your body relaxes and you feel good. Your respiratory rate goes up, giving you better flow of oxygen.

These changes will help you think more clearly and be more productive. Laughter can also enhance your immunity by reducing your body’s production of stress hormones and strengthening your immune system.

Humor helps us take ourselves less seriously. Much of our stress comes from giving too much importance to how we see ourselves or worrying about how others see us. If you can learn to laugh at yourself, you rob others of the ability to trigger your stress. Humor provides perspective by creating distance and objectivity.

If you can find a way to see a potentially stressful situation in a humorous way, you reduce the stress level for that experience. Life is full of embarrassing moments, and they happen to everyone. The key is how you handle it.

Examples of when humor – in good taste – can be useful at work include: staff meetings, training, daily interactions with coworkers, occasionally during patient interactions, new employee interviews, orientation, and training, and yes, even during Joint Commission inspections.

I find that a little tactful humor can go a long way in putting people at ease – whether it is you or the other person who needs to relax. Bringing humor and laughter into the workplace to ease job stress does not mean that you need to compete for the title “Last Comic Standing.” You don’t need to be funny or creative to have fun.

Just lightening up the mood and being friendly to coworkers and customers will help the environment become more fun. Using humor in a positive manner will help staff work together and handle the stress of their jobs.

However, if used negatively, or inappropriately, humor can hurt feelings, promote misunderstandings, cause resentment, and generate tension. Inappropriate humor includes:

• Anything that suggests you are important
• Jokes that make fun of any ethnic, religious or racial group
• Jokes about the opposite gender
• Using other people as the butt of a joke – to humiliate someone in public is unforgivable

Keep in mind that humor is often found in the facial expression or tone that accompanies the words. Most e-mail users realize that the words, without tone and expression, can seem rude and inappropriate. We need to keep in mind that the receiver has no clue of our tone or facial expression.

Work is more fun when you enjoy each other’s company, and it is easier to be friendly to others in a fun environment. Telling work-related stories is a good way to liven up the environment. Most therapy professionals will have a pocket full of “horror” stories.

Self-criticism is another great form of humor. Poking fun at yourself can be a great stress reliever for others. When coworkers laugh with one another, goodwill and a feeling of trust develops. When the overall environment is fun, you will increase teamwork.

The Best Medicine

The most effective way to show others that a fun environment is encouraged is to model the behavior. Don’t just talk the talk, but really walk the walk. Laugh at yourself and smile often. This can become the expected behavior in your department. Mixing humor and work can help employees relax and enjoy their work, get along better with their coworkers, cut absenteeism, and increase productivity.

The cost of employee turnover is high. The hiring process is time-consuming, and a lot of effort and cost go into a good orientation and training process for new employees. In addition, high turnover dampens the morale of the rest of the team.

Making the work environment enjoyable will increase the morale of the department, increase retention, and increase recruitment efforts. Very few people leave a job saying, “I couldn’t stay at that job. We just had too much fun there.”

It is important to determine whether a new employee will be a good match to your department’s personality. If you are building your team’s foundation on a sense of fun and creativity but hire people who don’t have a good sense of humor, you are not building your team – you are creating weak links.

Many employees determine within the first three days of employment whether or not they will stay with an organization. Make each new staff member’s first days on the job a lot of fun. One way to make a new employee feel welcomed is to train using a buddy system.

The buddy should go over the training information with the new hire and walk him around the department, introducing him to other staff, and showing them where the lockers are and where to pick up important information. Also, the buddy should have lunch with the new hire on the first day. The staff should work together to engage with the new employee, so he feels welcomed and connected to the department.

A fun environment also makes training and learning easier and more effective. During the orientation and training process, many departments have adopted the use of a scavenger hunt to locate items such as fire extinguishers, sign-in sheets, the image library and various staff members.

It is a fun way to get someone comfortable with the location of various items and meet people in a very short time. (If your department is big and confusing, remember to send someone along with the new staff member for the hunt. It never looks good to lose someone on their first day – don’t ask how I know this!)

Focus on building a “team spirit.” The staff that plays together, stays together – and performs well together. Combining fun with getting the job done will add a positive benefit to your department’s morale, which will translate into more satisfied, more productive staff – and as a side effect, your customers will feel more comfortable in your department.

When receiving a service (whether the service is purchasing your $4 cup of coffee, new tires or therapy services), most people are more likely to repeat business where the employees seem to enjoy what they do.

If your work environment is one of support, team building, and fun, this will be apparent to your customers. Employees tend to treat their customers as they are treated. Staff that work in a stressful environment with little or no support from their coworkers and management will probably treat their customers with the same lack of consideration.

Often, our customer’s satisfaction has little to do with the cutting-edge technology our departments offer, or the speed of turnaround from image taken to report signed.

Instead our “quality” of service is often rated on the patient’s overall impression of the friendliness of the staff. If staff members feel that they are valued and treated fairly, then your customers will have a more satisfying experience (OK, maybe not the guy having a barium enema).

The Last Laugh

Creating a fun work environment, or “making someone laugh today,” should not be something on your “to-do” list, as it will feel forced. Instead, come up with reasons to celebrate a non-work-related break from the stress. For example, schedule a pot-luck, ice cream social, or milk and cookies in the afternoon. Working in a fun environment does not excuse staff from following department policies, or allow staff to waste time and ignore customers.

Instead, a fun work environment should be an opportunity to boost morale, increase productivity, improve retention and recruitment of staff, and increase the overall energy of the department. If employees enjoy coming to work, then absenteeism, turnover and stress should decrease. Having fun at work will break up the seriousness of what we do, help people cope with their job responsibilities, and make staff want to come to work.

Remember that you do not have to employ Laurel and Hardy to experience the benefit of humor at work. You may not even be able to tell a good joke, but if you are able to share a smile, a giggle, or a true belly laugh with a coworker, customer, or even yourself, you can reduce job stress in your workplace.

Laughter and having fun is contagious! You will make work more fun for your staff, peers, patients and, most importantly, for yourself.    


References:

1. Bakke DW. Joy at Work: A Revolutionary Approach to Fun on the Job. Seattle, Wash; PVG: 2005.
2. Buxman K. Motivating with Humor. Supervision, 2005; 66: 16.
3. Elkin A. Stress Management for Dummies. New York, NY: Wiley Publishing, Inc.; 1999.
4. Fraliz P. Closing the Gap. Kitchen & Bath Business. 2006; 53: 42.
5. Gallo C. 10 Simple Secrets of the World’s Greatest Business Communicators. Naperville, Ill: Sourcebooks, Inc.; 2005.   
6. Hahn G. Contented Cows – Bringing up a Happy Herd. Sales and Service Excellence. 2000; 7: 1-2.
7. Hemsath D, Yerkes L. 301 Ways to Have Fun at Work. San Francisco, Calif: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.; 1997.
8. Peters T. The Pursuit of WOW! Every Person’s Guide to Topsy-Turvy Times. New York, NY: Vintage Books; 1994.
9. Weiss WH. Humor on the Job. Supervision. 1997; 58: 9.

— Terry Stavang, MBA, CRA, RT(R), is assistant director of diagnostic imaging at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose, Calif. Questions and comments can be directed to editorial@therapytimes.com.