Your boss’s sense of humour might be contagious

There is good news for managers whose leadership toolkit includes the occasional decent joke: your sense of humour might be rubbing off on everyone else and doing good things for your team culture.

New research published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications found that when leaders use humour, employees are more likely to use humour themselves. That lightness can then spread between colleagues, strengthening relationships and contributing to a sense of thriving at work, which these academic researchers have defined as feeling energised while also feeling that you’re learning and progressing.

So yes, humour at work may actually be contagious.

Before anyone adds “excellent banter” to the leadership competency framework, there is a little more to it than cracking jokes in meetings.

How humour at work spreads through a team

The researchers looked at what happened socially when leaders used humour.

What they found was less about whether employees thought their manager was funny and more about what happened next.

When leaders used humour, employees tended to use more humour themselves. Coworkers also became more likely to joke with one another.

Those teams reported stronger relationships between colleagues, which was then associated with employees feeling more energised and able to develop at work.

In other words, humour appeared to ripple outwards.

That matters because leaders constantly tell employees what kind of workplace they are in , often without saying anything explicitly. Employees are watching their managers for cues.

How does a manager react when something goes wrong?

Can they laugh at themselves?

Can someone admit they made a mistake without the temperature in the room dropping ten degrees?

Can people disagree without it becoming painfully awkward?

These tiny interactions tell employees how formal they need to be, how much personality they can show and how safe it feels to behave like a human being at work.

Humour can be one of those signals.

A leader who can laugh at their own typo or make light of a frustrating Monday morning is just more comfortable to be around. And none of us need a study to tell us that.

Why humour at work can strengthen workplace relationships

The most interesting part of the research isn’t simply that funny bosses have happier employees.

It’s that the effect appears to travel between colleagues.

The study found that humour was linked to stronger “team-member exchange” , academic language for something most of us would recognise immediately: colleagues who trust one another, help each other out and generally have decent working relationships.

Think of the teammate who covers something while you’re off without making it an issue. The person you can ask a stupid question. The colleague who helps when something goes wrong rather than quietly keeping score.

Those relationships are a huge part of employee experience.

And sometimes they are built through very ordinary moments: the shared joke after a painful meeting, someone making everyone laugh during a difficult week, or a manager being willing to poke fun at themselves.

Nobody needs a corporate initiative for this.

Please, in fact, do not launch a mandatory Friday Banter Programme.

When humour at work goes wrong

Humour only helps when it makes people feel more included, rather than making somebody else the punchline.

There is a world of difference between a leader laughing at themselves and a leader using sarcasm, ridicule or jokes aimed down the hierarchy.

Anyone already known for inappropriate jokes in the workplace should not interpret this research as peer-reviewed permission to carry on.

Context matters too.

A joke that builds warmth in one team can land badly in another. Culture, hierarchy, relationships and personality all shape whether humour feels connecting or uncomfortable.

The study itself also has limits. It looked at employees in one industry and one cultural context, and it identifies relationships between behaviours rather than proving that humour directly causes people to thrive.

So the takeaway isn’t “leaders should make more jokes”.

It is much more useful than that.

What humour at work means for employee experience

We often talk about employee experience and workplace culture through their biggest moving parts: values, engagement strategies, performance systems, manager training and leadership programmes.

Employees experience culture at a much smaller level. It is built through hundreds of everyday interactions.

How does my manager respond when I make a mistake?

Do colleagues help one another?

Can we laugh when things get difficult?

Can I relax slightly around these people?

Those moments shape whether someone feels they work for a toxic boss or for a leader who makes work feel easier to navigate.

And that is the useful takeaway from this research:

Humour at work is one of the small ways leaders set the emotional tone of a team.

Used well, it can give people permission to relax, connect and respond to one another with a little more warmth.

What helps is something much simpler: warmth, perspective and the confidence to behave like a human being.

Because when leaders make that feel safe, other people often follow.

And sometimes a better employee experience starts with something as small as being able to laugh together.

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Source: Chen, S., Houghton, J.D., Hong, X., Liu, Y., Li, X., Zhao, Y., Chen, G. and Zou, W. “The ripple effects of leader humor on follower thriving at work: a two-path serial mediation model.” Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (2026). Read the research.