Health and well-being are crucial for achieving the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. Given growing concerns about workforce well-being and its impact on work-related stress, there is a rising recognition of the significance of validating relationship-oriented human resource practices at work. This study aims to investigate how humour in the workplace acts as a soft cultural factor in human resource management (HRM), impacting psychological well-being and green engagement, while exploring potential gender differences. The study is quantitative in nature and adopts a cross-sectional design. Data were collected through a self-administered questionnaire from 298 employees working in the banking and finance, education and IT sectors in Pakistan. The results indicate that positive humour significantly predicts both employee green engagement and psychological well-being. Employee green engagement was found to mediate the relationship between positive humour and psychological well-being. Additionally, the study reveals that the impact of positive humour on employee green engagement is more significant among male employees compared to their female counterparts. This research contributes to the soft HRM literature by highlighting humour as a factor for relationship-oriented practices, validates the concept of employee green engagement and offers novel insights into the direct and indirect effects of positive humour on psychological well-being.
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