As a member of the business world, you are surely familiar with the Dilbert cartoon strip, and as a boss you probably even think a lot of the Dilbert strips are funny. After all, these cartoons are not making fun of you, right? But then again, it is easy to second-guess this sentiment when you start to see Dilbert cartoons tacked up on the cubicle walls of your employees. Of course, at first, it feels like you are just being overly paranoid to think that a cartoon strip could have any effect on the morale of your employees, but it is also difficult to shed from your mind those articles that talked about how Dilbert actually can have a negative effect on employees. And so the question becomes, are Dilbert cartoons bad for employee morale?
First off all, one must remember that humor and laughter is good for morale. Undoubtedly, the fact that these cartoon strips make your employees laugh is a sign in the right direction. But the issue, of course, is the fact that most of these laughs are induced by taking jabs at corporate culture. And it is difficult to keep your own self out of the specifics of this discussion when you see a cartoon on an employee’s wall that makes fun of the boss. The solution, however, might not be as simple as just banning the cartoons from people’s cubicles. After all, you are sure to make employees think you are completely out of touch with the way they feel if you make such a brash decision. A better form of action is to look at the strips yourself instead of ordering that they all be taken down from walls in the office. The reason many of these strips are thought to be funny is because they make fun of the things that are wrong with corporate culture; if your employees think these strips are so funny, there is a chance that the problem does not lie with the comic strip itself. The problem might actually be with your company, and with the way it is run! While some might think it is trivial to turn Dilbert into a topic of serious discussion, many businesses have, in fact, banned these cartoons from cubicle walls. Every boss wants to improve morale around the office, but instead of banning humor and hoping it will do anything but alienate employees, you should aim to improve employee morale by improving all the ways in which your business itself is run!-
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