Tips to make the most of your office breaks

September 18, 2015

Office break times are one of the few highlights of busy workday. Two Baylor University researchers made sure you are taking advantage of them.

Emily Hunter, Ph.D., and Cindy Wu, Ph.D., associate professors of management in Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business, surveyed 95 employees (ages 22-67) over a five-day workweek, and each person was asked to document each break they took during that time.

Hunter and Wu chronicled and analyzed a total of 959 break surveys — an average of two breaks per person per day. They say the results of the study benefit both managers and employees.

Key findings of the study include:

The most beneficial time to take a workday break is mid-morning.

Hunter and Wu found that rather than the typical culture of working hard all morning only to take a lunch-hour or mid-afternoon break, a respite earlier in the workday replenishes more resources — energy, concentration and motivation.

“We found that when more hours had elapsed since the beginning of the work shift, fewer resources and more symptoms of poor health were reported after a break,” the study says. “Therefore, breaks later in the day seem to be less effective.”

“Better breaks” incorporate activities that employees prefer.

A common belief exists that doing things that are non-work-related are more beneficial, Hunter explained. Based on the study, there was no evidence to prove that non-work-related activities were more beneficial.

Simply put, preferred break activities are things you choose to do and things you like to do. These could also include work-related tasks.

“Finding something on your break that you prefer to do — something that’s not given to you or assigned to you — are the kinds of activities that are going to make your breaks much more restful, provide better recovery and help you come back to work stronger,” Hunter said.

People who take “better breaks” experience better health and increased job satisfaction.

The employee surveys showed that recovery of resources — energy, concentration and motivation — following a “better break” (earlier in the day, doing things they preferred) led workers to experience less somatic symptoms, including headache, eyestrain and lower back pain after the break.

These employees also experienced increased job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior as well as a decrease in emotional exhaustion (burnout), the study shows.

Longer breaks are good, but it’s beneficial to take frequent short breaks.

While the study was unable to pinpoint an exact length of time for a better workday break (15 minutes, 30 minutes, etc.), the research found that more short breaks were associated with higher resources, suggesting that employees should be encouraged to take more frequent short breaks to facilitate recovery.

“Unlike your cellphone, which popular wisdom tells us should be depleted to zero percent before you charge it fully to 100 percent, people instead need to charge more frequently throughout the day,” Hunter said.

The resuts are in the paper “Give Me a Better Break: Choosing Workday Break Activities to Maximize Resource Recovery” published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

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