Humour at work is no joke
The funny business of being the office comedian
The best days at work leave me in tears. Tears of laughter, that is. The Chemistry World crew are a funny bunch, and it doesn’t take much for one of us to turn an innocuous situation into something absurd. I would share some examples, but I doubt I can describe the effects of a well-timed gif well enough to convince you that it was in any way amusing.
Even if I could, you still might not find us funny. A sense of humour is a highly individual and varying taste – even something you find hilarious one day might not be so funny the next.
Humour is even more difficult to get right in corporate communications. In part, this is due to the inherent purpose of these messages: if you’ve got something important enough to say to an entire workforce or sector, it’s unlikely to be of a frivolous nature. But even less-serious messaging should deploy humour with care, as the managers of an office building in Toronto, Canada, found when they tried to welcome employees back after a long period working from home.