Heard the one about the Swiss company installing laugh detectors?

Funny business: former Finance Minister Hans-Rudolf Merz gets the giggles in parliament in 2010. Keystone / Peter Klaunzer

Series Swiss oddities, Episode 10:

Swiss insurance group Baloise is testing the frequency of laughter in an office to improve job satisfaction. Workers who don’t laugh enough are sent an email with a funny video. What’s going on? Do the Swiss need cheering up? And how do two former government ministers fit into the story?

“The average adult laughs about 15 times a day, which is why we said four laughs in two hours should be possible, and anything less is insufficient,” project manager Alexandra Toscanelli explained in an interviewExternal link with the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Baloise has installed a so-called Chief LOL Officer (“laugh out loud” in textspeak, not “lots of love”) in the offices of a client with ten employees. If someone fails to hit their chuckle quota because they’re stressed or – who knows, maybe working? – the LOL Officer will know. It uses a microphone and artificial intelligence (AI) to measure sounds in the environment, and if there’s a lack of mirth, the employee will be sent an email.

According to Toscanelli, this could be a meme, a video of a cat tumbling off a table, or a bit of accidental slapstick on a scooter. She admitted that cat videos weren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but an agency specialising in social media had compiled “the best of the internet”.

What makes the Swiss laugh? Do they like laughing are themselves? Here’s a light-hearted look at the famed Swiss sense of humour:

Toscanelli denies the project is a joke. “But I’m happy if it makes people smile,” she said. “The device should also encourage laughter, but above all we’re looking at how much laughter there is. And if there’s not enough, then we motivate the employees to laugh a bit more, hopefully.”

But isn’t it possible to fake laugh and prevent the LOL Officer from distracting you? “We trained the AI […] using real laughs,” Toscanelli explained. “Yesterday we set up the device in the test company – we coughed and laughed artificially to trick the AI, but it worked. But even fake laughter helps mental health. Serotonin [a mood-boosting hormone] is still released as soon as the laughter muscles are activated.”

Mental health

The aim of the project is to improve mental health, with small and medium-sized businesses being one of the target groups. Absenteeism and mental health are important issues there, not least because they cost companies a lot of money. According to Baloise, Swiss companies lose CHF6.5 billion ($7.5 billion) a year because employees’ mental health is affected.

“We still talk a lot less about mental problems than we do about a broken leg,” Toscanelli said. She acknowledged, however, that “laughter is not the solution to everything”. “We also need contacts, hotlines and help centres,” she said.

The medical benefits of laughter is something former Economics Minister Johann Schneider-Ammann knows something about. Schneider-Ammann made international headlinesExternal link in 2016 when, as Swiss president that year, he gave a speech on National Day of the Sick. The theme was laughter.

“Laughing is good for one’s health, according to a popular saying. Like me, you’ve almost certainly had the experience,” Schneider-Ammann said. Fair enough – nothing extraordinary about that. The reason the clip went viral, however, was his delivery.

OK, you don’t necessarily expect politicians to have the comic timing of a stand-up comedian, but if you don’t speak French, you might think Schneider-Ammann was announcing the diagnosis of a terminal disease. Still, he got people laughing, so mission accomplished.

And to be fair, the avuncular Schneider-Ammann does actually have a sense of humour. Here he is, a couple of weeks after the election of Donald Trump as US president in 2016. He was asked whether he had spoken to his new counterpart across the Atlantic. He said he hadn’t, but he had written a letter, congratulating him. He then explained how that had happened (from 0.30 in the following clip): “The evening before the election I had two letters on my desk, and I was instructed to sign both of them. I signed one of them. And the next morning I had to sign the other one…”

Another Swiss politician who went viral was former Finance Minister Hans-Rudolf Merz, who in 2010 got the giggles in parliament when providing information about meat imports and sales of … B-B-Bündnerfleisch! He later said he cracked up at the use of such bureaucratic language being applied to dried meat from canton Graubünden.

Even if you don’t speak a word of German, if you don’t laugh – or at least smile – when you watch this short clip, then there’s nothing the LOL Officer will be able to do for you.

Edited by Samuel Jaberg/gw

Series Swiss oddities

• Episode 1: 1. When a Roman emperor risks falling from his pedestal
• Episode 2: 2. Feline felons: what to do with Switzerland’s killer cats?
• Episode 3: 3. ‘That mummy is my great-grandfather’
• Episode 4: 4. A Swiss Ig Nobel laureate talks about side effects and placebo effects
• Episode 5: 5. The Ticino palm falls victim to its atypical reproduction
• Episode 6: 6. Sainte-Croix: the Swiss village that keeps the tradition of automata alive
• Episode 7: 7. The Swiss metal detectorist who helped find a Roman military camp
• Episode 8: 8. The surprising boom of Switzerland’s least-loved coin
• Episode 9: 9. Gold-digging: why some Swiss bury their wealth in the garden
• Episode 10: 10. Heard the one about the Swiss company installing laugh detectors?
• Episode 11: 11. In search of the ‘authentic’ Swiss musical instrument
• Episode 12: 12. Hornussen, the Swiss national sport with a sting