HUMOR-Coming soon to a business near you! Smart organizations are using humor to their advantage, says HumorRules

Organizations that use humor right tend to attract and retain the best people in their industries. Meanwhile, research shows humor lowers stress and dramatically improves creative and cognitive thinking. Philadelphia-based training and consulting firm, HumorRules®, shows organizations from a range of industries how to use humor for business success.

HumorRules®, an innovative, Philadelphia-based training and consulting firm, is showing clients like Chevron, Wells Fargo Bank, and Bristol-Meyers Squibb that humor is serious business.

In this age of 'doing more with less, humor may offer the most effective, low-cost way for any group to gain a competitive edge," says DONI TAMBLYN, President of HumorRules® and author of The Big Book of Humorous Training Games (McGraw-Hill 2000) and Laugh and Learn - 95 Ways to Use Humor for More Effective Teaching and Training (AMACOM, fall 2002). Research shows humor lowers stress, and dramatically improves creative and cognitive thinking. Organizations that use humor right tend to attract and retain the best people in their industries."

Example: A major oil company had a problem staffing its call center with quality employees. HumorRules helped them redesign their training to include fun activities and PowerPoints. Combined with job interview training for hiring managers, this resulted in a 40-60% increase in new hire retention! Meanwhile, on-the-job performance also increased substantially over previous scores.

I dont see why this should surprise anyone," continues TAMBLYN. When the message is fun to listen to, you cant stop people from listening. And when people enjoy listening, they are more likely to remember and buy in."

Most professionals say they think humor can be very good for business, but have identified two concerns about using it themselves:

1. They think humor is a gift, only a handful are born with. TAMBLYN says they are only half right, Humor is a gift," she says, and everybodys born with it. Real humor has little to do with telling jokes-thats comedy club stuff-and everything to do with play. As former children, we are born experts at play."

2. They worry humor might be used inappropriately, possibly offending customers or employees; even leading to lawsuits. This, agrees TAMBLYN, is an excellent concern. It is also easily addressed. When we teach clients our common-sense rule for avoiding inappropriate humor, theyre usually amazed they didnt figure it out for themselves," she laughs, theyre also able to employ it immediately and flawlessly."

Used correctly," TAMBLYN concludes, humor inspires positive feelings toward the person, the message, the product, or the organization. We have to remember that good employees are like good customers-they are picky about where they do business."