Is Dilbert Bad For My Employees' Morale?

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, when you start to see Dilbert strips tacked up on your employees' cubicle walls, it is easy to start second-guessing this self-assuredness. 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. Certainly, the fact that these strips caused your employees to laugh is a positive sign.

The issue, of course, is that many of these cartoons induce laughs by poking fun 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. But the solution to the problem might be more complicated than just banning these comic strips. After all, it is unlikely that banning these strips would have any effect except to make employees think that you are out of touch with the way they feel.

Don't just order that all comic strips be taken down from office walls; instead, you ought to take the time to look at these comic strips yourself. 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 be with the way your company itself 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. If you are wanting to improve morale around your office, do not alienate employees by acting in this manner; instead, take a look at the way your business is run, and aim to improve morale by improving your business!