The late American humorist and columnist Erma Bombeck once wrote, “Humor is a spontaneous, wonderful bit of an outburst that just comes. It’s unbridled, its unplanned, it’s full of surprises.”

Of course, humor and the desire for fun are what most of us believe are more likely to happen outside the confines of work, and not something that we’d experience around the water cooler or break room.

But the truth is, fun and humor are essential to a successful work environment.

In fact, this is an observation that Tami Evans, CSP, embraces and shares with all her audiences.

Evans shared her comedic insight on May 19, during the Closing General Session at the 41st Annual Payroll Congress.

"Being able to let go and laugh together is one of the best predictors of a company's financial success,"  she said.

Her presentation, “Lighten Up and Lead: Leveraging Levity and Fun to Boost Engagement,” was a testament to how imperative happiness is to the employee and business success.

“Life is really just spaghetti against the wall,” said Evans. “Everyone out there is just making it up. Even if they look like they have it all together.”

Evans, who taught university classes and authored, “Half Full of It: Activating Optimism and Other Hard Core Soft Skills,” loves being on the stage in front of a live audience and admits that performing is in her blood.

In fact, she was an actress, and she loved performing in New York City where she was living at the time. But it came with its fair share of heartaches, too.

“You have no control over your career,” Evans said. “It’s not, ‘the hardest worker gets ahead,’ there are all these other aspects. I had no control how that happened, so do I want to readjust my goals, completely abandon them, or do I want to sit in a room and pout?”

While Evans was considering her goals, she reconnected with Christine Cashen, an old college friend whom she hadn’t seen in nearly 10 years.

The two were catching up and sharing stories about their families and career paths, when Cashen, who happens to be a professional public speaker, told her she thought she’d be a great speaker.

Her curiosity was piqued and with Cashen’s help, she began to research and explore this potential new career path.

The more Evans learned about professional speaking, the more she began to see the similarities with teaching at the university level and performing on stage.

She was hooked.

Today, in addition to her separate speaking business, she and Cashen created Emcee Squared, an interactive co-emcees program that infuse positive energy at conferences though audience participation.

“Watching ideas pop into people’s heads is like … nutrients,” Evans said. “It just fills me when I watch people have these a-ha moments. To be able to elevate that and share that message on stages across the United States and make an impact was icing on the cake.”

Like a lot of speakers, Evans does her homework and researches her audiences and the industries they represent.

This usually starts with checking out the company’s website, talking to its members or employees, and eventually goes deeper with phone calls to people who will be at the conference.

To prepare for the Payroll Congress, Evans said she reached out to others who have spoken at past Payroll Congresses to get their perspective, particularly as it relates to audience participation.

Even though this was her first Payroll Congress, Evans said she had no doubt the atmosphere would be electric. She loved the energy and the motivation of attendees as they embraced their “inner dork” and celebrated where they were going professionally.

"For every clunk, you gotta have three zings." A clunk is a negative thing that happens at work like stress and year-end chaos. Zings are positive things that happen in our life like Taco Tuesday, timely timesheets, or a quiet payday," she said. "When you're faced with a clunk in your life, the best way to move forward is to let go of all your previous plans and try to inject some zing into your life."

Of course, payroll professionals who've been in the industry for some time have learned that sometimes, chaos happens. Thus, Evans' message of letting go and pushing ahead resonated with attendees.

Robin Davis, CPP, Director of HR Data and Payroll at South Florida University, said that Evans' talk inspired her to work on letting go instead of focusing on all of the things that could go wrong. 

"We can plan for a lot but not everything," Davis said. "Evans reminded me that it's okay if something doesn't work out according to plan. Instead of trying to control all of the uncontrollables, we need to focus on having fun and making work more enjoyable."