HR leader cites importance of leaders being role models
While breaks from work make a lot of sense, for some workers, there is too much pressure, both internally and externally, so regular time away from daily tasks simply doesn’t happen.
Researchers from the University of Waterloo recently published a study that hopes to provide some insight into the psychology of break-taking.
The study was broken into two parts: 107 employees were asked to provide reasons why they took a break, and a further 287 workers were queried more deeply on how fatigued they felt and how many breaks they actually took.
From the results, “competing predictions” were uncovered, according to researcher James Beck, associate professor in the department of psychology at the University of Waterloo in Ontario.
“There’s these stress theories, and they basically say when we’re under stress and strain, we take a break and so, from this perspective, it suggests that people with high workloads will feel fatigued and then want to take a break,” he says.
“But there’s another theoretical perspective that says when people have high workloads, they don’t have a lot of time, they have to put their time into doing the work and that suggests that high workloads lead to less breaks.”
Regular breaks are key to employee wellbeing and overall performance, found another study.
Worrying about colleagues
When it comes to taking breaks, there are common themes around why people didn’t do so, found the study “Why Do People (Not) Take Breaks? An Investigation of Individuals’ Reasons for Taking and for Not Taking Breaks at Work, ” also by Vincent Phan, who is completing a master’s degree in industrial and organizational psychology at the university.
“One was they wanted to maintain their momentum. Another was they were worried about leaving their coworkers hanging, the guilt: ‘If I leave them, it’s going to fall on them,’ and another is expedience: ‘I have a lot to do, I have to get it done fast,’” says Beck.
While these reasons tend to be self-manifested in some cases, workplace culture also plays a strong role in whether or not employees feel they are allowed regular pauses, he says.
“If people who reported being in climates that were very break-friendly, when they wanted to take a break, they did. Folks who reported being in climates that were not so break-friendly, where breaks were frowned upon, they did not act on their desire: they wanted to take a break but didn’t follow through with that in terms of behaviour.”
Remote workers are doing a wide variety of different things when stepping away, according to a recent survey.
On the flip side, when employees don’t take enough break time, the consequences can be quite harmful, according to Beck.
“If that persists over long periods of time, the word for it is burnout and that can be really bad. If that’s chronic, then that can have very serious effects and I’ve read some papers where burnout is basically indistinguishable from clinical depression; it’s a very serious situation.”
HR leader encourages time away
In order to encourage more employees to step away from their desks, it generally starts from the top, according to a senior HR person.
“For us at Organon, this is something that we’ve been working hard to do and it requires a lot of role models’ certain behaviours; that tone from the top. We have multiple examples, starting with our MD and our leadership teams, in how they will model this every day for employees. Our MD, for instance, he has young children, and every day he goes to daycare from school at the same time, and it’s okay and that’s a positive thing for employees,” says Litsa Spiridonakos, human resources director at Organon in Montreal.
The company began a program last year, in which all employees were told to stay away from work on International Women’s Day and this also continued this year, which has truly given employees the impetus to look after their health by stepping away, according to Spiridonakos.
This has proven to provide strong benefits for the company, she says.
“It allows employees to rest, recharge, whether it’s taking time for themselves and when they return to work, they feel more engaged, more motivated, more productive. In our case in particular, this allows them to reconnect to our mission and our purpose and that ultimately has a huge impact on their engagement as well.”
Is there an ideal way to schedule break time? Not necessarily, says Spiridonakos.
“We’ve experimented with different ideas: ending meetings five minutes early, offering summer hours, but we found it to be too restrictive because different people have different priorities and for us, it’s really about creating the right conditions in an environment where employees feel they can ask for time off; they can take a break, they can manage their schedules as they see fit.”
‘Getting away’
In taking a break, people should truly separate from work, according to Beck.
“If you walk away from your computer, but then you’re going and maybe paying bills on your phone, that’s probably not very rejuvenating. There is also some work that shows some light physical exercise can help, like basically just a stroll, a walk; being out among nature, the trees can help.
“I don’t think it’s just a matter of getting away, I think you do have to pay attention to the quality of the break and what you’re doing to some extent.”
For HR, providing workers with the right environment is key to effective breaks, says Spiridonakos.
“HR has a critical role in creating, supporting a culture of psychological safety, and building that trust and flexibility with employees. I also feel as an HR person myself, it is our catalyst to helping the organization experiment with different ways of working and challenging the status quo, and challenging our leaders.”
“So from an HR perspective, also from a from a wellbeing perspective, whether it’s breaks or more broad than that, HR should continuously focus on enhancing programs policies to support the wellbeing of employees,” she says.
