Humor - A Powerful Retention Potion A Renowned Speaker Shares Secrets of Corporate Bonding
By Kathy Passanisi

Q: What can humor do to increase employee retention?

A: Humor creates quality of work life, which is a big plus in the work place. Since jobs are plentiful, skilled workers are hard to come by, companies are pretty much offering the most they can in terms of money and benefits. They have to have something that tips the scale in their favor, or employees will jump ship.

Secondly, companies really don't pay a lot of attention to stress management, and because of that, the number one complaint among employees is that pressure and pace is so high.

Q: Sounds awful!

A: It is awful. People like playing on a good team. And when we play on a good team, we need to know each other in a way that's more than just, "Oh, that's Ted in Accounting." When humor puts a human face on us, I am less likely to criticize you, less likely to blame you. I am more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt. It's easier to trust you. And when I trust you, we're a team.

Q: So, what you're talking about is really raising the level of awareness about the importance of humor and morale and having it be on people's minds continuously.

A: I think that a lot of the humor really does that if it starts from the top down. You know, Herb Kelleher, CEO of Southwest Airlines, is marvelous at this. He said, "if we meet this sales goal" or whatever, he will show up in Bermuda shorts or something. Southwest Airlines has wonderful employee retention. They function in the black all the time, and if you've ever been on their airlines, they have a good time. ...We're talking about incorporating a light-heartedness into a stressful workplace to enhance the goals that are already in place!

Q: So it is like a thread that runs through it!

A: There was a large human resource study 737 human resource vice presidents were asked this question: You have two people applying for one position, and they are equally qualified in every way. The only thing that sets them apart is that one demonstrates a sense of humor, the other does not. Will this make a difference in whom you hire? 98% would take the person with the sense of humor. They are more flexible, better at customer service, better team players, more creative.

Q: I'm just curious about how you got started with this and where you see this all going?

A: My background is in healthcare and I have a little background in counseling. I chose to stay home when my daughter was born and when I decided to go back to work ... I decided that I would create the perfect job for myself. And I didn't have a clue what it would be.

But I knew I could make people laugh and I had done some university teaching. People would ask me to speak, only I was teaching stress management, and when I did that, I instinctively made it funny. People would say, "She's really funny," and hand me a check!

Well then these women would come up to me afterwards and say, "You know, my husband works at this bank. They are stressed out over there. Do you think you could go talk to this bank, or do you think you could go down to Anheuser-Busch?" Yes, I could do that. It was the same solid content that other people gave ... but because I made it funny, people hired me back. What happened was then all of the information started coming out on the role of humor as it relates to health and the role of laughing as it relates to healing because of Norman Cousin's book, Anatomy of an Illness. We started to see the medical research that was actually supporting the adage: laughter is the best medicine.

I said to some of my clients, "I put together this program on the value of humor, I would love to come and do this for you!" And at first they kind of looked at me, and I said, "Have I ever let you down before? If you don't like it, don't pay me!"

Well, it turned out to be the most popular thing I did! Hospitals would say, "Will you come work with the nurses?" And they would say, "Would you work with the state nursing association?" Or, "would you come and do a meeting of the Catholic Health Association of the United States?" Would you come to AT&T? Would you come to Compaq computer? Would you come to Southwestern Bell? I do a lot of work with the American Heart Association, I work with the Cancer Association. I work ... with all these and Chase Bank!

I think what these companies are failing to do is not addressing the issue of stress. And because of it, people just can't take it anymore. Their only recourse is to just say, "I'm outta here!" And if I'm outta here, you've lost this employee, and you are starting over!

Q: Yeah, it is almost like this big valve of steam that you are letting off ...

A: But when you do that, it fingers out in so many different directions in terms of customer service, creativity, teams, less healthcare costs. And certainly, people wanting to stay there and feeling a part of something that they can be proud of and that they are happy to show up at.

Q: Have you seen some dramatic changes like that?

A: I think what we are seeing are ... primarily departments that will start something. I'll give you an example: I was doing a meeting once for Southwestern Bell Yellow Pages and I think the first people I worked with was advertising. Well now, this is a right brain, creative, hard-to-corral group. Two weeks later I got a call from the finance department at the Yellow Pages and they said, "We are located right next door to advertising, and they are having way more fun than we are. Can you come and speak to the finance group?" And by the time I got finished, I had gone through about seven or eight departments in the Yellow Pages because you could begin to see the change in the groups that were lightening up. And the other groups were saying, "What do you know that we don't know?

There was a group of people I worked with at the Daughter's of Charity health system. There is a gentleman there who is the head of clinical data resources and their offices are in the basement of one of these buildings; they all sit in front of computers all day, and people call them, "Those people in the basement." Well John decided to take a group photo, so what they did... they wore jeans, white T-shirts, black leather jackets, and black wrap-around sunglasses. And they went out on the steps of this building, it looks like the born to raise hell picture, but the caption says, "Born to Raise Health". And it is their team picture. Well now everybody knows who this group is. They have this bonded identity. And they all have little pictures that they carry in their wallets like the family photo... And it is their team picture, "Born to Raise Health"! He used something really funny to bond them together. Everybody knows who they are! And there are only five or six of them!