I recently saw an old comedy show from the 1980’s complete with scheduled canned laughter. Nowadays we don’t do that as comedy is definitely more natural and well, funny. Indeed, comedians get most of their material from real life situations - life in itself can be a laugh.

One of the aspects of work that people miss most is that fun. For many the spontaneous banter that goes on is totally irreplaceable in a scheduled, digital setting. This was one of the discussion topics at the CCA Women in Leadership session this week, where leaders from 20 leading brands in finance, technology, charities, services and public sector had a really fantastic debate about well-being in our new world of work.

All agreed that it was difficult to keep a momentum on ‘manufactured’ fun, and that things had changed markedly since the Spring lockdown. Quizzes and bake off’s have their place but it is key not to overdo the need to be seen to be ‘having fun’ when people are exhausted from working in front of screens all day with no division between work and play.

Fun is a bit like happiness- it’s an output or a consequence of a build-up of actions and emotions, difficult to script and will fail if forced.

The group shared loads of useful insights about how they individually have navigated well-being - it’s now part of every business decision. Knowing boundaries is vital. Concerned questions about how people are feeling can be interpreted as criticism, without the guidance of body language intelligence.

And yet standards need to be met. Customers are running short of patience with ‘because of Covid’, and so the role of managers tasked with both well-being and performance is much more challenging than ever before.

All of this is being tackled head on at next week’s CCA Annual Convention where we have gathered together a truly amazing group of expert contributors to help navigate our way through these choppy waters. We have also built in some fun so for two hours Tuesday through to Thursday there’s an action-packed programme designed to inform, entertain and yes, to laugh too!

Make sure you register for your free member pass if you haven’t already. 

Have a great weekend with hopefully a few real laughs in there somewhere! 

Regards

Anne Marie