2.5 minute read  |  The $0 employee benefit we rarely talk about

Here’s a strange question for your next employee engagement survey.

“How often do you laugh at work?”

Not: Are you satisfied with your compensation? Not: Do you understand our mission? Not: Would you recommend us as an employer?

Just: Do you ever laugh here?

It sounds frivolous. It may not be.

Research on workplace humor consistently points in one direction. Leaders who use humor are often perceived as more motivating and are associated with higher engagement and well-being.

But here’s where it gets more interesting. Researchers have also identified a real downside. When a powerful boss jokes constantly, employees can feel obligated to laugh, even when they don’t find something funny. That forced laughter can become emotional labor.

In other words: real laughter can connect people. Mandatory laughter can exhaust them.

That’s a pretty good metaphor for culture

You cannot order people to have fun.

You cannot install a foosball table and declare yourself a great workplace.

And “FUN!” written in the employee handbook is generally a warning sign that fun may not be forthcoming.

Real laughter tends to appear when something else exists first:

Comfort.

Trust.

Shared experiences.

A little vulnerability.

Permission not to be perfect.

People who actually like one another.

Think about the best team you’ve ever worked on. Chances are, you remember what you accomplished. But you probably also remember what you laughed about.

Serious people can laugh

Somewhere along the way, business taught us that seriousness and competence are related.

They’re not.

You can run a billion-dollar company and laugh.

You can operate machinery safely and laugh.

You can meet enormous goals and laugh.

You can be a brilliant surgeon, accountant, warehouse supervisor, attorney, or CEO and still occasionally find something ridiculous.

In fact, during difficult periods, humor can be one of the ways humans remind one another that we’re still in this together.

Try measuring something different

For the next week, don’t try to make your workplace fun. Just notice it.

Where does genuine laughter happen?

Who brings lightness into difficult situations?

Which managers make people relax when they enter a room, and which make the room go silent?

Do employees laugh with their supervisors?

Do people across departments enjoy one another?

When something harmless goes wrong, can everyone occasionally laugh and move on?

Those observations may tell you something your annual culture survey never will.

Perhaps one sign of a healthy organization isn’t that everybody looks incredibly busy. Maybe it’s that people can work incredibly hard, and still occasionally hear laughter down the hall.

The question to take to work

When was the last time your entire team laughed together?

If you can’t remember, that’s interesting. If you can remember immediately, that’s interesting too.

Building a workforce that people genuinely want to be part of?

Real culture isn’t built by perks or policies. It’s built by the people you hire. Exact Staff helps companies find the ones who bring warmth, honesty, and the kind of energy that makes teams actually enjoy working together, and that’s often the difference between a workplace people tolerate and one they choose to stay in.

Contact your Exact Staff Representative to schedule a consultation.