in this current financial climate there’s a danger that we can lose our sense of humor (spelt Humour in UK). We have all becoming increasingly entertained by the incompetence of the Government when they all suddenly pretend that their favorite food is Cornish pasties. But how important is humor in business?

Business Humor?
I’m not talking about playing jokes or being silly at work. I mean the humor that attracts people to it and relieves pressure and stress of day to day work. That management encourages humor and is even prepared to initiate it rather than take itself too seriously. 

Let me give you some examples:
Given the choice of two networking meetings which would look most attractive to join?
A group talking seriously with each other or another group that’s obviously having a good laugh and being entertained as in the picture above.

At work do you mix with the individual who’s always smiling or the person with a depressive nature who when he smells flowers looks around for a funeral.

Humor and success
In my experience I often note that the person with appropriate business humour skills, as well as qualifications and experience, is the individual that’s more easily promoted.
The problem with so many people at work is that they have great senses of humour, but manage to hide it well.

What are your experiences of humor and success and your favorite stories?

A number of my friends and clients are excited at the work I’ve done on “finding a dream job using Social media”. The work is almost done now and will be available very soon on my personal website and well as Assimilating-Talent.

My team also wants to share it with everyone on it’s own specific site, which sounds awesome!
So watch out for news

The current dispute between British Airways and the cabin crews must pose concerns as to the ability of the airline to develop a positive working relationships in the future between the airline and its staff.

Whilst there is no doubt that British Airways is looking to cut costs and ensure that the airline is able to compete with its rivals one must consider that British Airways must either break the union or potentially become a shadow of its previous self.

The problem with either result is the potential ill feeling felt by both sides at the end of the dispute. A recovery of morale, trust and mutual support could take many years to achieve. During this time passengers may well opt to travel with rival carriers and thus leaving BA with the long-term potential of becoming the UK’s Pan Am!

The Airline would do well to start planning how they might achieve a recovery of morale, professional working and team-building prior to the end of the dispute. To spend time congratulating itself on any real or imaginary victory over the union could well be too late. 

For over a decade employers in the UK have become used to the fact that employees have a great deal of choice in the job market. Talent could leave to jobs with more money and benefits and in the USA and the Far East.

To fight this trend employers in the EU have been encouraged to “engage with their staff”, provide training and development opportunities and ensure that their talent is at all times happy and well managed. This trend has been encouraged by the UK Government as well as EU legislation providing employees with redress for any unfair treatment. In fact for ten years “niceness” has been in vogue.

However, has the tide begun to change? With the financial downturn employers would expect to see employees become less demanding so as to protect their jobs.

That will probably depend upon what happens to inflation. Already at its highest for ten years and predicted to increase to above 4%, employees are likely to expect increases in salary in order to keep up. Petrol tanker drivers are possibly the first in a series of high profile wage demands that will run through the coming autumn and winter.

Employers will feel constrained by increasing costs and an inability to increase their product prices and cost savings will result in “regretted layoffs”. The time to know that a recession is upon us is when the daily news bulletins begin to report redundancy figures as happened in the 1980s.

The trick for forward thinking businesses will be to identify those employees that are essential to survive the downturn, identify the skills that are needed and to develop a strong team that can ride out the storm.

YouGov have published research into employee engagement and linked it to financial performance (As published in Human Resource magazine). The research shows that companies surveyed with high levels of employee engagement (above 70%) showed improvements in OI of 19% during the following year. Those with a low engagement (Less than 70%) saw their OI fall by over 32%.

In the banking sector it was discovered that for every 10% uplift in satisfaction there was an increase in sales by 4% or 5m per bank for personal accounts. It was found that a high recognition culture translates onto the botton line.

With the current problems in the UK and US Banking secors and with banks such as UBS, Barclays, HSBC reviewing their employment strategies one must wonder how their engagement and satisfaction levels will be affected and how this will translate into sales?