Humour in business: Martin Searle, company founder and managing director of Signature Group, says that the fun stuff keeps down the stress and keeps smiles on faces.

Auckland imaging, print, and design company Signature Group Limited placed first in its section in this year’s Humour in Business Awards.

Auckland imaging, print, and design company Signature Group Limited placed first in its section in this year’s Humour in Business Awards.

It won in the category: businesses with up to 19 staff, sponsored by Ignite Systems. Martin Searle, company founder and managing director, says, “Humour in business is part of our company's everyday chemistry, with the pressure we all work under the fun stuff keeps down the stress and keeps smiles on faces.”

Signature Group supports a charity event called `The Pirates'. Developed by Searle and friend Roger Waymouth, the pirates comprise a fun loving bunch of people that get together in their crazy and wacky sponsored fun cars and fire engines, and go on the road shaking the buckets four times a year, for a children's charitable cause.

Searle says, “Signature Group, like many businesses, budgets a set amount of its profits towards supporting the community. Focusing a set amount of funds to the pirates charity and being pro active with those funds, has a very rewarding outlook. The Pirates are accepting entries for the next event should any business houses want to join in the fun and the giving to others.

The pirates last event raised funds for Kidz First Children’s Hospital and the National Burns Centre based at Middlemore Hospital by touring Northland, shaking buckets and participating in crazy activities.

Pam Tregonning, executive director for the South Auckland Health Foundation, says, “Every year these guys do amazing fundraising for us, and have such great fun doing it. We are very grateful for their support.”

Launched in 2006, the Humour in Business Awards gained immediate endorsement from Monty Python comedian John Cleese, who was touring the country. He said, “I used humour for many years in the video arts management and sales training films. However, there's a right and a wrong way to use humour. It must grow out of the point that you want to make, and not be tacked on to it.”

Awards founder Pat Armitstead agrees. She says, “The awards are designed to celebrate the notion of fun at work and contribute towards the general well being of individuals, teams and the nation. It is not necessarily about the most sophisticated application of humour or the best use of jokes, though these are all part of what it means to be good humoured. Being good humoured is about being appropriately responsive. High trust environments foster this space.”