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Why hiring an employee with a sense of humour?
Today, interpersonal skills are essential to our personal and professional success. In our workplace, we are increasingly encouraged to improve our ability to manage relationships in a meaningful and empathetic manner. Organisational humour can create positive energy within a company and help improve our leadership skills. But, used inappropriately, it can also destroy a manager’s credibility and offend. Dr Vanessa Marcié, our CEO has published a new article for La Tribune.
Extract
Executives who encourage humour in the workplace can use this tool as a vehicle to eradicate toxic corporate cultures, improve talent retention, and increase productivity while putting employee well-being first.
And it all starts with human resources. For example, knowing a candidate’s type of humour can help refine recruiting and build more harmonious teams. By enabling the use of humour within teams and / or within the company, leaders and other managers can participate in the transformation of a company’s DNA. Wouldn’t you like to work in a company where humour and play could be building blocks to increase productivity and performance?
Collectively and individually
Organisational humour should be caring and intelligent. What you are aiming for is a positive collective sense of humour that will overcome barriers and build meaningful connections between members of an organisation. For example, you can look at the different stereotypes of customers or situations that can occur in the value chain, and you can extract the funny elements from them.
A 2017 poll by Robert Half found that 80% of executives say a sense of humour is essential to fit into their corporate culture. Hiring people with a sense of humour is, therefore, a quick way to inject some humour into your business. And frankly, if you have to spend eight hours a day at work, it’s better if you spend it with a coworker you can joke with, right? However, most companies overlook the fact that a candidate’s sense of humour is the # 1 trait to look for in a hiring process.
We tend to hire an employee because he / she is a technically perfect fit, but how many companies realise the importance of shared values and philosophy?
While the first criterion no doubt guarantees that a candidate will be able to fulfil the criteria for the position, the second could assure you that the person will last long in their role.
It sounds simple, but it’s essential!
To meditate
– When receiving a resume, look for employees who have hobbies and community involvement outside of work.
– During the first interview, direct your questions to find out what relationship this person has with humour, what their sense of humour is and whether their sense of humour will have a positive or negative impact on others.
Other questions to ask:
– Does her sense of humour match the people she will have to work with?
– Does it correspond to the culture of the company?
– Does it agree with the stakeholders?
Then, during the onboarding process, try to create a fun context allowing new employees to bond through humour…
Originally published for La Tribune
Do you lead a team? Do you want to improve your leadership skills? Learn how to use Humour in Leadership. We offer a curriculum of virtual classes (new dates added regularly) and 1-1 coaching programmes to help leaders to master a leadership tool for the 21st century: humour.
Our curriculum is designed to provide deep self-awareness, awareness of others and a mindset shift on work and life.
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