The science behind taking breaks during work: Reduce stress and increase productivity

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Hello everyone, I’m Dr Mike Oliver, a chartered psychologist and registered health psychologist. I’m one of the health coaches here at Zevo Health. I specialise in workplace health and wellbeing and as a health psychologist I help people think and behave differently in relation to their health.

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In particular, I’ve carried out research into the health consequences of taking breaks, or not as the case may be, at work. I’m now passionate about sharing my findings and in particular making sure that there are practical, easy to follow steps to help individuals, teams and organisations think and behave differently when it comes to taking breaks during the working day.

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What we’re going to cover in this webinar is the psychological and physical consequences of taking or not taking breaks at work. We’ll explore why some people, why so many of us find it hard to take breaks at work and look into some of the perhaps counterintuitive reasons that some people have for not taking breaks and then what I’ll make sure we do is finish off by leaving you with some tips for individuals,

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teams and organisations who want to ensure that breaks are a regular part of their working life. I think it’s important to be clear on the type of breaks I’m talking about in this webinar. I’m focusing in on the breaks that most of us should be taking during the working day, typically at lunchtime.

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There is a whole other world of equally fascinating and relevant research into taking very short or mini or micro breaks. at regular intervals throughout the day. I’m a big proponent of those as well but perhaps that’s for another webinar.

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So what I’m talking with you today is about the break in the middle of the day when in theory we should be taking a break away from our normal place of work for a short or a preset period of time. This applies both to office or desk-based workers and to manufacturing roles but clearly it is easier for people with desk-based jobs who perhaps have a bit more control and autonomy over when they take breaks and to be able to decide when and how they take their breaks.

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It is worth mentioning at this point that there are some legal requirements when it comes to taking breaks at work. These are broadly similar across Europe. For example in Ireland In general, you are entitled to a 15 minute break when you’ve worked for four and a half hours.

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And if you work for more than six hours, you are entitled to a 30 minute break, which can include the first 15 minute break. It’s interesting that there’s no entitlement for these breaks to be paid and they’re not considered working time.

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In the UK, workers have arrived to one uninterrupted 20 minute rest break during the working day if they work for more than six hours a day. This could be a tea or lunch break. There are some quite specific exceptions to this based on certain specialist professions, perhaps working in a shop or if you happen to work on ships, et cetera.

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And there’s also some age criteria which change it as well. But as a broad rule, these are the guidelines that cover the majority of workers. So before I go on, I’d just like you to take a moment to reflect on your relationship with taking breaks at work.

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If you’re listening to this webinar after lunchtime today, what did you do at lunchtime? If it isn’t yet lunchtime, what did you do yesterday or on the last day you were in work? So what did you do? Did you stop working for 20 minutes, perhaps half an hour, maybe even longer?

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Did you go to a different place than your normal workstation or desk? Did you eat something away from your desk? You may have gone for a walk. You may have read a book or even done something like yoga or going for a run.

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And whatever you did, did you do it on your own or with colleagues or a friend? Perhaps you don’t slow down a little bit. Perhaps you didn’t leave your desk or workstation, but you definitely stopped working on your current project.

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Perhaps checking out the news on the intranet. at Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and perhaps you ate your lunch whilst still at your desk. The odd email may have popped up, which then they were quite easy to reply to, weren’t they?

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Perhaps you thought, I’ll get more done if I push on through. I’m on a roll here. Perhaps there’s a deadline at the end of the day that you simply had to meet, and there’s no way you could have afforded 20 or 30 minutes or even an hour out of your working day.

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Anyway, you went to the gym or you cycled to work first thing, so that’s your exercise and movement sorted for the day, isn’t it? Let’s just have a little look at this thing called sitting down, being sedentary.

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This slide isn’t meant to alarm you, but just to point out some of the well-researched studies that have shown the links between too much time spent sitting down and various health links. Please realise that this doesn’t mean there’s causation, but there is simply an increased risk of these health conditions.

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All these statements are taken from published peer review journals, so extended periods of sitting can be associated with increased obesity, the incidence of metabolic syndrome, the risk of ovarian cancer, you can reduce one’s lifespan, increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and linked with increased depression.

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If we were just talking about the subject of being sat down for too long, I think one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever seen is from Dr Keith Diaz, an expert in behavioural medicine at Columbia University, who said, the best advice that I can give for someone concerned about their sitting habit is to sit less, move more, and move often.

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But I’m going slightly beyond that, I’m talking about the linked subject of taking breaks. Let’s look at why some people don’t take breaks. What I’d like to do now is share some of my research and that of others, which will hopefully help you think about your relationship with taking breaks.

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You may well recognise some of these statements that people have made, some of them you may not recognise at all. The first one is, it’s okay, I don’t need to worry about breaks today, I went to the gym, first thing.

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What’s really interesting is that there’s a growing body of research which is telling us that the harmful effect of too much sitting remain even when carrying out the recommended levels of physical activity.

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In some research by Du Vivier in 2013, it was demonstrated that even if someone spends an hour of physical activity prior to working, this cannot counteract the negative physiological impact such as insulin levels.

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and plasma lipids if the rest of the day is spent sitting. They concluded that regular movements such as standing or walking could have more impact than one hour of exercise outside of the time spent sitting.

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So please, please, please don’t think you shouldn’t be going to the gym before work or walking into work or cycling. I think that’s absolutely superb that you’re doing that. I think the message here is to keep doing that and make sure that you are taking breaks throughout the day.

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Something else that some people say is taking a break has nothing to do with how I feel. So there’s some really interesting research which has shown that people taking walks at lunchtime improves wellbeing during the afternoon.

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There’s other research that shows people doing resilience sessions. So that’s the mind, physical activity at lunchtime improves general wellbeing later in the afternoon and also can be linked to the reduced symptoms of depression later in the day.

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And many, many studies have shown the power of yoga as a lunchtime activity to increase one’s wellbeing later in the day. Obviously, doing this can’t guarantee an improved sense of wellbeing or mental wellbeing at work.

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We all know that work can be a complex environment, there’s constant change, periodic restructures, strained relationships. Somebody recently said to me, you can’t out yoga a bad boss, but hopefully you’ll recognise that you are giving yourself a better chance of a greater sense of wellbeing and mental health later in the day if you’ve taken a break and done something meaningful during its lunchtime.

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Here’s another one that I’ve heard, certainly it’s less common than some of the others, but somebody said walking is weird. And it was related to a very specific workplace culture, but it has stuck with me as an example of how a culture can influence behaviour and certainly health behaviour in a workplace.

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I listen to things like that and I wonder where’s that idea come from? Why would they think that? So in this particular workplace, some people felt just so uncomfortable getting up from their desk to do the simplest of things, which was take a break or move or go for a walk.

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This one’s quite common as well. I’m on a roll. I’ll get more done if I work on through. But again, I’d draw you back to the research which suggests and demonstrates that there can be increased wellbeing, sense of satisfaction if you take a break and do something useful, meaningful.

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different from work at lunchtime, and actually you become more productive later in the day. So again, these are some of the counterintuitive things that some people say. Here’s something else that I’ve heard quite a lot.

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It’s not possible to change the way I am at work, or I’m pretty successful as it is, thank you, I don’t need to change what I do. And more often not, it’s been more senior people who say things like this.

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Now I find this adds an extra level of challenge for people who are in their teams who do want to take breaks. I’m sure we all realize that bosses are role models, very often for good, but not always.

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So if more junior people see that their bosses are working through their lunch hours, then they may well think that that’s the way to behave in this organisation. I think this is a particular challenge for people.

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who are starting out in their careers, perhaps straight from school, college, or university. I would be challenging bosses and team leaders to set a positive example when it comes to health and wellbeing at work generally, and in the context of this webinar, when it comes to taking meaningful breaks at lunchtime.

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I think the experience we’ve all had of living through the pandemic and the different ways of working perhaps gives us a chance to reset and recalibrate the way we do some of these health behaviours at work when we move back or we start operating in the new way of working, hopefully after the pandemic.

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So let’s just take a moment here to think, well, what else is going on here? In my research, I was curious about what explains these statements, these patterns of taking breaks or not that we’re seeing.

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And these were some of the findings. So it’s not all or nothing. And by that, there isn’t one distinct group or type of person who always takes breaks, and then another type of person who doesn’t take breaks.

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They kind of merge. Sometimes we take lots of breaks, we take a break every day, and then there’s a period of time when we don’t. So it’s not black and white, it’s not binary like that, but we do tend to see people who are more prone or tend to take breaks versus those that don’t.

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So for those of you want to take more breaks, it’s quite common to find that you will take them. So what is it on those days that you do take breaks that you’re doing to allow you to do that? Another key point is that of relationships.

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These could be peers, friends, colleagues, bosses. Basically doing something with someone at work makes it so much easier. So people can feel pressurized. I would very frequently hear people saying, I had planned to go for a walk at lunchtime, but X or Y got a meeting.

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in my diary. So what we’re beginning to see here is this thing called work wins. So people want to take a break, but automatically if a meeting appears, then they forget about the break. So it takes quite a strong person sometimes to decline a meeting and say, no, this is my protected time, I’m going to take a break.

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There’s some people, and I say some people do feel guilty or even anxious about taking breaks, not everyone, but in some cases they do. In one focus group, I ran out on this subject. People admitted to making things up or having to have stories about why they were taking a longer than normal lunch break.

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One of my favorite comments was, I’m really sorry, I’m sorry I’m late back, but the jacket potato took ages to arrive. And they weren’t particularly late, they were just taking the… legal requirement break, good for their health, going to get something nice to eat, but they felt they had to justify why they were a bit longer than their colleagues.

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And another comment which you may well be familiar with is basically when you stay at your desk, actually thinking that you’re taking a break, are you? Because a colleague won’t know that. So you’re a fair game for a work-related discussion.

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And again, not too many people would say, would you mind if you came back or I’ll come and find you and talk later about this? I’m actually on my lunch break at the moment. So there were some of the things underpinning the statements we’ve been hearing about why people do and don’t take breaks.

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So hopefully this is helping you reflect on whether you take breaks or not. And perhaps you might want to start thinking about how you change your behavior in that regard. So as we draw towards the end of this webinar, I just want to say a quick word about behavior change, which as a health psychologist is the area that I specialize in the most.

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This model is based on the work of Susan Mickey and her colleagues. This is the COMB model or capability, opportunity, motivation, and behavior. And it’s an increasingly popular way of helping people to think about successfully changing their behavior with regards to health.

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What this model does, it recognizes that people need to feel that they’re both physically and psychologically capable of carrying out the behavior. So that’s what we call capability. People need to have the social and physical opportunity for the behavior.

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And then also, they need or want to carry out the behavior more than the other competing behavior. that might be around them, and that’s the motivation. Just to give an example away from our subject, most of us know that we should be eating five pieces of fruit and veg a day.

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That’s we have the capability, we know that, but do we have the opportunity or even the motivation? Lots of attempts to encourage people to change their health behaviour are limited to just telling people what they should do, giving them some information, but not working with them to find their opportunities or increase their motivation.

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So bringing it back to our case, the health behaviour change in question is taking meaningful breaks at work. So hopefully this webinar has given you a bit more knowledge about the subject which is your capability, but what about your motivation to take breaks?

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Do you want to take more breaks? And what about the opportunity that you, your teammates and your bosses and work culture give you? Building on the COMB model, I’m just going to leave you with this suggestion about how you might build on that and start taking more breaks.

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So as you, as an individual, I would suggest have the desire and the motivation to do something meaningful and different at lunchtime, be active if you can, learn something new that’s not related to work, follow the live ways to wellbeing, which is about giving, taking notice of the world around you and connecting with other people and other things in life, just for a short period of time.

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So that’s for you. I’d add on that as a team or with colleagues and friends, do things together, encourage and support each other. Don’t underestimate the power of doing things in a social context. And I think this is absolutely vital.

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As a boss, don’t underestimate the fact that you’re a role model. So your behaviour will influence the behaviour of others and where you can encourage and reward people for taking breaks. And don’t forget, by the way, it is the law.

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People should be taking breaks if they’re working for those periods of time that we talked about earlier. And then more from an organisational point of view, has an organisation got the policies and the culture to follow the law and to support the health and wellbeing of the people who work there.

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So it’s quite difficult sometimes to do this as an individual, but if you can have your team, your bosses and the organisational culture wrapped around you, then you’ve got much more chance of the behaviour sticking.

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So I started off the webinar with a question asking you to think back about what you did at lunchtime or what you were going to do. So now, what are you going to do in your next lunch break? So thank you.

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Thank you for listening. I hope that this webinar has made you think positively about your good existing behavior in relation to taking breaks at work, or perhaps has given you some food for thought about changing your behavior when it comes to taking breaks and the health benefits that it can bring.

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If you would like further information on the subject, please don’t hesitate to get in touch by the details on the screen. Thank you very much for listening.