Happy April Fools’ Day, if you are lucky enough to live in a country that celebrates it!

Unfortunately, the Dutch do not do April Fools’ Day, so I have to indulge vicariously through my Canadian friends and the geniuses at Google.

April Fools’ Day is an age-old tradition that can be extremely entertaining, but also somewhat tricky for human resources to navigate!

Like Scotland’s version of the holiday, which revolves around pinning fake tails, and kick me signs to each other’s rear ends, a combination that incorporates just enough potential for violence and sexual harassment to make even the most cool and collected of HR managers sweat.

Tricky!

Humour is relative; one person’s idea of a hilarious prank is another’s cause for filing a harassment suit, making April Fool’s Day one of the more controversial workplace holidays, and a favourite topic for HR and recruiting bloggers.

Use Humour to Engage Employees on April Fools’ Day! - Karen Huss

Why not use April Fools’ Day to your own advantage? Instead of fearing the holiday, embrace it by pulling some of the office appropriate pranks Karen recommends.

Getting your team laughing is great for morale, team building, and engagement… It’s also just plain fun!

April Fool’s Pranks You Can Pull at the Office and Not Get Fired - Elizabeth Bromstein

Need more prank ideas? Elizabeth has you covered with an excellent list of jokes that you can pull at the office without hurting any feelings or inspiring any lawsuits.

She even includes tutorials for the more complex pranks!

List Maker to Create List of Recruiting Lists – Todd Raphael

Todd Raphael shows us how it’s done with a unique April Fools’ article.

In it he writes about how “In one of the more curious decisions the talent-acquisition field has seen a recruiting vendor has decided to make a list of the 100 most influential lists of recruiting influencers.”

If You Think That Humour is Risky and Hard to Pull off, You Haven’t Seen These Corporate Videos – Rocco Sannelli

Maybe the real takeaway from April Fools’ is to add more silliness into every workday! Rocco shares some examples of companies who inject humour into their recruitment process with great success.

The Top Office Pranks for April Fools’ Day - Dan Wisniewski

In the spirit of keeping work fun, this infographic shows the best of the best of office pranks.

Personally I’m really into the Jell-O stapler idea!