Tense Offices Getting Comic Relief

Traci Mendez and her co-workers at Sprint posed with a duck and climbed a tree recently. Betty Kay and her office mates talked and wore clothes backward during a monthly fun day at their conference call company.

Frolic on the job? Company-sponsored laughs? You bet.

Humor is fast becoming a serious business in corporate America, where many employees have been overworked, downsized, re-engineered and restructured so long they’ve almost forgotten how to smile.

Taking notice, the corporate world is searching for comic relief. Companies are spending thousands of dollars to bring in humor consultants--therapists, comics, healers and teachers who are finding gold in corporate frowns. And employers are sponsoring “fun at work” days, joy committees and other play times to try and keep the giggles going.

“We believe employees who have fun feel appreciated and come together as a team,” says Sprint executive Margery Tippen. “That helps them be more productive and helps our customers.”

Tippen organized Sprint’s recent Fun at Work day, when 3,000 workers at regional offices nationwide divided into teams and raced to see who could take the zaniest photos of themselves. The day produced more than a passing laugh, says participant Mendez.

“This provided more of an open door, a comfort level with people,” says Mendez, a marketing manager who now works closely with one of her teammates as a result of meeting that day.

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To some, however, such organized fun smacks of treatment for the symptoms, not the diseases of corporate life.

“It’s in the same category as giving people a certificate of appreciation instead of a pay raise,” says Scott Adams, creator of the “Dilbert” comic strip that lampoons office life. “It’s well-intentioned but kind of what you do because you can’t deal with the fundamental problems.”

After a decade of restructuring, American employees no doubt could use a laugh. Even in booming fields, workers are pressured by the pace of technological change and the threat of global competitors.

“If you’re lucky enough to still have your job, it’s most likely you have more work to do, you have to do things faster, have more skills,” says Paul McGhee, a Montclair, N.J.-based psychologist who dubs his humor business The Laughter Remedy. Such stresses keep him in business, he says.

Paradoxically, a growing awareness of the wrong kinds of humor--racist or sexist jokes, innuendoes of harassment--also helps keep offices somber.

“We’ve gotten so caught up in being politically correct for everyone that people are afraid to laugh,” says Martie Soper, a critical care nurse at Connecticut’s Yale-New Haven Hospital who attended one of McGhee’s seminars. “You have to be careful.”

A few companies, such as Southwest Airlines, are famed for their fun or informal atmospheres. Most often, they are led by chief executives who make play as much a priority as work.

But increasingly, other corporations are open to the message that laughter boosts morale, builds teamwork, releases creativity and even improves one’s health.

At an appearance before hundreds of Pacific Bell managers, California humor consultant Matt Weinstein asks how many in the audience are depressed. Hands fly into the air. Then he roams the stage, pitching the benefits of laughter like a frenzied minister preaching salvation.

He asks the audience to stand up and introduce themselves to six others in half a minute, prompting a giggling scramble throughout the room.

“You can’t come in and say, ‘You have to have more fun,’ ” says Weinstein, who charges $7,500 for a 90-minute talk. “We give them an experience of fun in the room at the time so people get permission to start laughing and having joy.”

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In her seminars, Mikki Williams uses Play-doh to loosen up participants. Lynn Berger of Longwood, Fla.-based Lighten Up Ltd. wears duck and dog snouts during her talks and urges her audiences to sport them too.

To keep the laughs going, consultants urge workers to tell jokes, take humor breaks, or sponsor an ugly tie or shoe contest. Many consultants make follow-up calls, and say their advice is heeded a good deal of the time.

“If you don’t use it, you lose it,” says Berger, who says the success of her humor prescription often depends on top managers’ acceptance.

“Sometimes it’s a hard sell,” she says. “Humor in the workplace sounds very frivolous. The people who hire us have to be able to justify why this is necessary.”

Humor educator Allen Klein’s work prompts such wariness that sometimes managers don’t reveal what Klein will talk about until he’s introduced, so employees don’t avoid the seminar.

Yet companies nationwide are increasingly interested in the humor business.

The Humor Project, a Saratoga Springs, N.Y., humor services group, receives 20 requests daily from companies looking for humor consultants, double the number received three years ago, says founder Joel Goodman.

Five years ago, consulting firm Watson Wyatt & Co. was rarely asked to add humor when it designed human resource programs, says executive Paul Sanchez. At least half of the firm’s clients ask for a dose of humor in their programs today.

And for many companies, the humor works.

Betty Kay, organizer of the monthly fun days at A Business Conference Call Inc. of Chaska, Minn., says the company’s efforts have reduced stress and built more camaraderie at the office.

“We’re learning to take work a little less seriously,” Kay says. “You spend so much of your life working, you may as well have fun doing it.”