The Safety of Work Ep. 134: Does caring about psychosocial safety mean we have to stop telling jokes at work?
The conversation explores how humor serves psychological purposes beyond entertainment, often functioning to establish power hierarchies and devalue professional contributions. Through survey data and qualitative interviews, the research demonstrates that passive coping strategies prevent organizations from understanding the true extent of harm. David and Drew argue that the "just joking" defense creates ambiguity that makes harassment difficult to report, particularly when supervisors are the perpetrators, emphasizing that effective psychosocial safety policies must explicitly address humor-based discrimination.
Discussion Points:
- (00:00) Defining psychosocial safety versus psychological safety
- (03:07) Introduction to workplace humor research in construction
- (06:44) Research aims and the construction industry gender gap
- (11:31) Research methodology using surveys and interviews
- (15:07) Theoretical framework on humor as communication
- (20:10) Survey findings on sexual harassment experiences
- (26:24) How humor is weaponized as cover for harassment
- (35:36) Conclusions on devaluing professional contributions
- (40:08) Key takeaways and practical implications for organizations
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Quotes:
"The harms are real. When we talk about expanding safety into the psychosocial space, however you might feel about that framing and whether safety people are the right people to be managing it, when we're talking about people getting hurt at work, gender based humour is a hazard." - Drew Rae
"I think this is the ultimate, you know, safety is not the absence of incident reports. This is clearly something that's happening to 50, 60, 70% of participants in this study and obviously representative of the broader population. If you're getting no insight into this through any of your systems, then you need to go looking." - David Provan
"The fact that something's a joke is being used almost like weaponised to mask or shield what's actually going on, we need to just like get totally away from the idea that humour is an excuse. The question isn't, is this a joke or not a joke? Question is, what was the underlying purpose of that joke?" - Drew Rae
"If no one's complaining, get worried. We know it's happening. We know that people don't complain. If you're not getting any complaints in your work site, that's not an indication that there's no problem or no harm. That's an indication that people are not feeling safe to complain." - Drew Rae
"Jokes are fine, but not these jokes. And I think this paper really helps us understand where we might be able to draw a less fuzzy boundary around what people can and can't joke about in the workplace." - David Provan
Resources:
Resource Link: https://ascelibrary.org/doi/abs/10.1061/JMENEA.MEENG-7109