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Humour can play a key role in creating a positive and productive workplace. This article looks at how humour can boost team morale, creativity, and employee well-being. Drawing on both classical views and modern research, the article highlights how humour helps ease stress, strengthen relationships, and make work more enjoyable. However, it’s important to balance humour with professionalism to avoid crossing into disrespect or insensitivity. When used well, humour fosters trust and collaboration, leading to a more engaged, happy, and productive workplace.

The term ‘talent management strategy’ of an organization includes both onboarding and managing ‘human’ resources to effectively bring out the best of their potential both in the individual capacity and collaboratively as a team. The team responsible for onboarding these talents has to mandatorily identify the right talent for the right role, and it is equally important that the leader managing these talents creates an environment to nurture and flourish so that they upgrade their talents. While it is very easy for us to bucket the job of an HR Head as (a) attracting talent (b) retaining talent, and (c) growing talent – care should be taken to ensure that the ‘talent’ is not reduced to an employee number or a head count but the human aspect of the talent is recognized, appreciated and addressed. Ultimately, the talent manager is accountable for managing the talent by creating a culture in the team in such a way that the hidden potential flowers and there is an opportunity for the talent to express herself/himself by understanding the purpose of the role for which she/he has been made part of the team. Alternately, when the manager does not micromanage, and the talent understands the task at hand by having clarity on the role – the talent will have more joy in fulfilling the responsibilities.

Fun fact: Humans start developing a sense of humour as early as 6 weeks old. Babies laugh, on average, 400 times a day, while people over 35, only 15. Also, adults tend to laugh less on weekdays than on weekends. Surprising, isn’t it?

Humour is the most coveted element in any human interaction. According to research, laughing in the presence of others indicates that the interaction is ‘safe’. Shared laughter also accelerates a feeling of closeness and trust. This is true even at work, which is serious business. Humour can lighten a conversation, spark innovation, increase engagement, and even foster fast interpersonal bonding between people. Research has shown that people who use humour in the workplace are rated as more competent and confident.

Saurabh Singh Sengar, an avid psychology enthusiast, is Assistant Manager – HR at HPCL. In his free time, he delves into cinema, books, and philosophy, constantly exploring new ideas and perspectives.

If asked today what kind of workplace we want to work in, most of us would, by default, utter the Fun word. Who doesn’t want a workplace that is full of joy, fun, laughter, and happiness? But how many of us can say our workplaces actually have a culture of playfulness, humour and lightheartedness? And why is it that difficult to create this fun, stress-free and playful kind of workplace? Let us try to answer some of these questions and dive a little deeper into the strategies that we can use to create a space where individuals thrive both personally and professionally.

Google’s “20% Time” policy, introduced in the early 2000s, allowed employees to dedicate one day per week to pursue innovative projects based on personal interests. This case study examines the policy’s impact on workplace culture, creativity, and product development at Google.