CONSULTANT TEACHES RECIPE FOR HAPPY WORKPLACE.

Byline: David Armstrong San Francisco Examiner 

Your business has just been downsized and re-engineered, and you may soon be out of a job. Or you may still be on the payroll, but the staff is smaller, there's more work and more pressure.

What to do?

Hey, why not just relax and enjoy yourself? Seriously.

That's the message from business consultant Matt Weinstein, author of the new book ``Managing to Have Fun.''

The book's jacket cover outlines Weinstein's ideas about the utility of humor and fun on the job: ``How fun at work can motivate your employees, inspire your co-workers, boost your bottom line,'' it reads.

Weinstein, a voluble, curly haired man who co-founded and runs the Berkeley-based consultant firm Playfair Inc., based his book on experiences he and his colleagues have had in 21 years of teaching corporations how to lighten up.

First, though, Weinstein explains, he has to convince companies that it's in their interest to promote an atmosphere of fun in the workplace.

Some executives complain, ```I don't have time.' That's a way to grind yourself out of business,'' Weinstein maintains. ``I have to beat into them: You have to make this a priority.''

Introducing some levity, and even generosity, into the workday, Weinstein says, helps reduce stress and cuts back on employee sick days.

Weinstein, who starred in a PBS special on workplace hilarity in 1994, reports that an increasing number of bosses have taken his advice to heart.

He speaks of an Oakland dentist who gave his employees $200 and turned them loose in a shopping mall, with an OK to spend as much as they could in an hour and return any unspent money to him.

Wells Fargo, Weinstein says, has experimented with having executives spend a day doing subordinates' jobs - with the subordinates acting as their supervisors.

Bank of America charged employees with bringing in a funny cartoon or joke every day, then gathered them together and published them as a privately printed book.

One killjoy, Weinstein concedes, wrote an angry letter about the joke book, something about levity not being appropriate at a time when companies are laying off people.

``People do say that, and it's completely wrong,'' he insists.

Writing in ``Managing to Have Fun,'' Weinstein submits that: ``Shared laughter in difficult times is not a sign of disrespect for the pain of the situation. Rather, it can be a first step toward healing the wounds.''

He has worked with stressed-out volunteers in the Oklahoma City bombing disaster, as well as with conventional clients such as Sprint and the Young Presidents Club.