Humor is a powerful agent for positive change. You often hear stories of humor improving the diagnosis of medical conditions. If you don’t know any stories first hand, take a look at Patch Adams (famously known as the clown-like doctor in the movie of the same name portrayed by Robin Williams). He believes humor and play are essential to physical and emotional health and he devoted his life to providing this type of holistic care to patients.

And it’s no wonder—laughter really is the best medicine. Not only does it improve your mood and make the diagnosis and treatment more bearable, but the relief of stress and anxiety is further beneficial to recovery.

That good mood and stress relief are also hugely responsible for success in teaching. Many studies have been done to conclude that the humor effect (including improved learning and retention) can be a major contributor to a successful training outcome. But why, then, do so many trainers omit humor from their sessions?

The answer: they don’t know how to use humor effectively.

Fear of failing is a huge factor in people not wanting to try something new, like introducing humor in a safety presentation. As is the case with everything in life, practice is the only thing that can help you become successful. The real Patch Adams knew that making people smile isn’t always easy. How do you practice making people smile? In an interview, he indicated that he would randomly call hundreds of numbers, pretending to be a sociology student, or when he was out in public he would engage with as many people as he could in conversation in order to successfully interact with strangers and get them to smile or laugh.

Fortunately, safety trainers don’t need to go to such drastic lengths. There’s a new free guide to humor in safety that will help you take a topic that’s typically considered dull and boring and build presentations and training sessions that are fun and engaging. The guide covers the basics for injecting humor into your safety presentations and it even includes a couple of jokes and some sage advice to get you in the right mindset.

Here’s an excerpt from the guide:

The key to life is moderation. It’s also the key to humor in safety training. Since you’re not performing a stand-up comedy routine, you need to remember this. There is such a thing as too much humor, especially in safety training. Don’t lose sight of the overall message you’re trying to deliver. It’s nice to get a laugh (and once you make them laugh you’ll be greedy for more), but the laugh is only meant to help sustain your training, so you need to know your limits.

The reason humor in safety is such a hot topic is that it adds an element of fun. And fun is a good thing to have in the workplace (and it’s pretty rare too). One psychologist who has studied the concept of fun at work says that “people who have fun on the job are more creative, more productive, better decision-makers, and get along better with co-workers. They also have fewer absentee, late, and sick days than people who aren’t having fun. ”

What’s in the guide?

You’ll find all sorts of tips, tricks and useful advice in the guide. It will answer all of the questions you have about injecting humor into a safety presentation, including:

• Why use humor in a safety presentation?
• What makes something funny?
• How do I use humor?
• Where do you find humorous material?

Download the guide to using humor in safety here and transform your next presentation into one they’ll remember.