Booster breaks at work enhance health and energy, and could ripple through organisations

Many of us in developed countries know that our lifestyle gets in the way of achieving a level of health in line with our level of wealth. With around half our waking hours spent in work settings, Wendell C. Taylor recommends an evidence-based workplace policy aimed to boost our health, with follow-on benefits for the organisation.

Taylor's paper, an eclectic review of research and practises including US federal recommendations, yogic techniques and sports science, points out that the modern workplace is laced with health hazards. These include a lack of strenuous physical activity, prolonged bouts of sitting still, weight gain (often due to unhealthy consumption), and of course stress. His solution is to take fifteen minute 'booster breaks' that involve health-promoting behaviours such as physical activity, meditation and breath training.

Fifteen minutes may seem like small beer, but Taylor lays out the evidence that these small efforts may have big effects. The US Department of Health and Humans Services, through a review of hundreds of studies, concluded that having some moderate-to-heavy physical activity in your routine improves health, even when the doses are small; indeed, no minimum level has been identified for producing health benefits.

Sedentary behaviour has serious effects on health - the risk of obesity increases by five percent for every two hours spent sitting at work - and the effects are worse when not interrupted; luckily, that's just what taking a booster break will do. Snacking and smoking, both common ways to use or even to justify work breaks, are suppressed when alternatives are promoted to fill our time. Given that on average we can prevent weight gain by tipping our energy intake-outtake by 100 kilocalories, these small effects matter.

We can also put in time to change our state of mind. Meditation can reduce anxiety and increase clarity of thought, and it can be hacked to fit even the short times of work breaks. Taylor asserts that rhythmic breathing can affect stress and immune function as well as reduce depression, and cites evidence for decreases in blood pressure from three months of practice of a few daily fifteen-minute sessions. Of course, all these types of break can increase blood flow and energy levels, which are both important for work effectiveness.

Taylor recommends sanctioning and promoting these health-enhancing practises in the workplace as booster breaks where employees get together to breathe, work out, or experience Big Mind together. He argues that such a policy can have multiple effects in a ripple-like fashion: the primary impact is at the centre, on individual behaviours; a smaller but profound effect takes place for individual outcomes like health, stress, energy, fun; then increasingly smaller effects occur for organisational morale, productivity, healthcare costs, and even for the organisation's image.

Taylor argues that breaks can enhance daily productivity even if they reduce the total time working, citing research conducted with data entry workers. This might seem strange if we see the capacity for work purely in terms of 'time available', but once we see energy as a major limiting factor this makes a lot of sense. Organisational morale is boosted partly by the group design, which encourages worker cohesiveness and a sense of collective fun.

We all want to stay well at work - the challenge is to know what we can do within our busy schedules. This article argues that even as little as fifteen minutes from our day can make a personal difference, and by taking our colleagues along we can multiply that impact, for ourselves and for the organisation. The full Booster Break methodology is currently being assessed using an ongoing randomised control trial - rest assured we'll bring you a follow-up once it's completed.

Taylor, W. (2011). Booster Breaks: An Easy-to-Implement Workplace Policy Designed to Improve Employee Health, Increase Productivity, and Lower Health Care Costs Journal of Workplace Behavioral Health, 26 (1), 70-84 DOI: 10.1080/15555240.2011.540991

Hey co-worker, your family stresses affect me, too

Kim is a little worried about her co-worker Greg. She hears all about his home issues: young kids, ill mother, and a house sale turned ugly.

You hear that his mammoth project has been stuttering recently - unsurprising.

It seems to have affected Kim a little too...

wonder how she is finding work right now?

Greg is experiencing family-work interference (FWI), where an individual struggles in the workplace, home, or in both domains, due to the conflicting demands they make. These include time demands and stresses, together with required behaviours - a workplace may expect an objective and cool style, whereas a family wants your openness and warmth. We vary in how we experience this: men are most likely to perceive the problem as family obstructing their work, rather than the reverse, and ‘Type-A’ traits are associated with more FWI. All in all, though, these clashes cause problems.

Now a new study by Lieke ten Brummelhuis and colleagues suggests that an employee’s levels of FWI affects not just themselves, but their co-workers too. They studied 1,430 pairs of employees from a Dutch policing organisation, and measured whether the FWI of one employee correlated with more sick days and stronger intention to leave the organisation for both members of the pair. They discovered it did: higher FWI produced worse outcomes on both measures for the employee themselves, and somewhat more weakly for their co-worker as well.

The team provide evidence that the negative outcomes are due to the transmission of emotional states from one co-worker to the other, a process called crossover. They measured states commonly associated with FWI: burnout, where exhaustion and doubts stack up to make daily responsibilities a struggle, and low levels of engagement, an attunement with your job, organisation, profession. The study showed that both crossed-over, and also showed that each appears to have a distinct effect. Burnout was more likely to lead to sick days, whereas lack of engagement, by eroding loyalty, increases intention to leave.

How the feelings caused by FWI cross-over isn’t fully understood. It’s likely to be a combination of negative banter, atmosphere, and displaced tasks from the overloaded employee. As such, it's premature on the basis of this research to recommend how to reduce the cross-over; some may be due to too much sharing between colleagues and some due to too little. But we can clearly see the benefit in seeking to reduce FWI for each and every employee, as the consequences can be far spreading. When Greg is feeling the strain, Kim may be feeling it, too.

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Ten Brummelhuis, L.L., Bakker, A.B., Euwema, M.C. (2010). Is family-to-work interference related to co-workers' work outcomes? Journal of Vocational Behavior, 77(3), 461-469, DOI: 10.1016/j.jvb.2010.06.001