The Levity Effect: Why It Pays to Lighten Up (#HRFL11)

Posted September 1st, 2011 in General, Video and tagged Book Review, HR Florida, Humor, Video by Ben

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I have read The Levity Effect: Why It Pays to Lighten Up, and I think it’s a fantastic book for people to read in order to understand the impact that humor and levity can have in the workplace. Scott Christopher, the author of the book and speaker at the session, had so many fantastic quips and quotes that it might as well have been a comedy session with some learning thrown in. It was phenomenal and I can’t say enough how much I enjoyed hearing him speak.

One of our core values is to have a safe and enjoyable workplace. That’s why we have photos of office staff in men’s helicopter flight suits and videos of bagpipers playing in our lobby. We take the enjoyable part very seriously. Well, not so seriously. Anyway, you get the point.

Five quick points:

Figure out what’s fun and share that (healing patients vs. serving food, building relationships vs. recruiting candidates, etc.)
Herb Kelleher-Southwest Airlines-order of recruiting importance from least to greatest: education, experience, humor
“Hard” interview question? What’s the most fun you’ve ever had at work? Ask things to find out what people like? Ask how people would respond to wacky situations that might be common at work.
Google’s gives their engineers 20% of their time for fun/non-work related stuff
You don’t have to be funny to enjoy humor.