A Healthy & Humorous Workplace Boosts Business Performance

Healthy employees make for a healthy bottom line. The mental and physical health of your employees has a direct effect on your business’ performance. To emphasize this synergy, the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine looked at health-focused companies that won its Health Achievement Award and found they consistently outperformed the
Standard & Poor’s 500 index between 1999 and 2012. Companies that emphasize a healthy work culture are more valuable to investors and remarkably impact business performance.

Laughter: An Important Ingredient in a Healthy Workplace

Sure, businesses offer company-sponsored health programs, and the typical ambitious businessperson participates in them. Yet among yoga practice and running, laughter in the workplace can also improve health. Laughter has numerous health benefits—it lowers blood pressure, reduces stress hormone levels, improves cardiac health and releases endorphins, according to Gaiam Life. Laughter is a healthy high that creates a productive and more engaged working environment.

“Health, happiness and productivity are intrinsically linked,” Josh Stevens told FoxBusiness.com. As CEO of Keas, a workplace health and wellness program, Stevens believes poor health directly affects employee disengagement, lost productivity and low job satisfaction. Employers can use humor as a cost-effective tool that improves an employee’s mental and physical health for enhanced productivity. Humor can release tension and reduce boredom for tedious and repetitive work. A hearty laugh can lower anxiety and stress, which helps an employee concentrate and focus on high-pressure projects.

Embrace a laid-back, relaxing (and productive) work environment where employees can naturally be themselves and make jokes. In an Australian study of 2,500 employees, 81 percent of the surveyed employees believe a fun working environment correlates to more productivity, and 93 percent said on-the-job laughing lowers work-related stress, according to the essay “Humor in the Workplace: Anecdotal Evidence Suggests Connection to Employee Performance.” A Robert Half International survey supports the humor and productivity relationship—84 percent of surveyed execs believe people who have a good sense of humor do better on the job.

Humor connects employees and boosts employee team-building, which creates an open, expressive and trusting work environment. If employees can bond over a silly joke and share a laugh, then those same employees are likely to positively collaborate on ideas and work well together on a project to achieve a common goal.

Get Merrier This Holiday Season

Welcome humor into the workplace by creating a non-hierarchical, innovative office culture that encourages employees to comfortably be who they are (within common-sense, professional limitations, of course). As the end of 2013 approaches, here are some fun holiday-themed events you can use to keep up employee momentum and motivation:

• Invite co-workers to happy hour
• Host a funny family photo contest. Invite employees to submit their silliest Christmas card photos and then create a presentation for the company. Ask employees to vote for their favorite and award first, second and third place winners with a PTO day or gift card.
• Throw an office party and welcome employees’ partners and kids—you can even have Santa on hand.

Use the holidays as an easy transition into a more laid-back workplace that encourages employee humor (and higher performance) for 2014.

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About the Author: Henry Griffith is a life coach for personal and professional needs. He works closely with several health and wellness organizations to promote healthy living in the workplace and at home. He has given multiple motivational speeches to public and private organizations. Now that he has small children of his own, he is taking time to write, travel with his kids and work on a book about healthy family living.