Many organisations invest in wellbeing. There is a meditation app, resilience training, a wellbeing week with fruit and a bootcamp. Yet employees say: “Nice, but I don’t have time for that yoga class, because my workload hasn’t gone down.”
Separate programmes change little
In Harvard Business Review, Jazz Croft, Acacia Parks and Ashley Whillans review the research. A University of Oxford study of more than 46,000 employees in 233 organisations compared people who did and did not take part in common programmes such as resilience training, mindfulness and wellbeing apps. Those who took part were no better off afterwards (HBR).
According to the authors, this is because these programmes focus on the individual employee, while the cause often lies in the work itself. They also warn that if someone dutifully uses the mindfulness app and their stress does not go down, because the workload stayed the same, it can make them feel hopeless. Their advice is to tackle workload and to train managers.
Our brain needs short breaks
What does help can be very small. Microsoft’s Human Factors Lab had fourteen people attend four half-hour online meetings while wearing a brain scanner cap. On one day the meetings were back to back; on another there was a ten-minute break between them. Without breaks, stress in the brain kept building up. With breaks, that stress dropped and people started the next meeting in a more relaxed state. They were also more engaged during the meeting (Microsoft).
A review of 22 experiments confirms that short breaks of ten minutes or less give people more energy and make them less tired (PLOS ONE). It can be shorter still. In an Australian experiment, a forty-second look at a roof full of greenery helped people keep their attention better afterwards (Journal of Environmental Psychology).
Erik Scherder, professor of clinical neuropsychology, even argues that we should allow ourselves to be bored more often. “When you come to rest, a network in your brain becomes active that can contribute to creativity and new ideas,” he says. If you are busy all the time, that network hardly becomes active (NPO Radio 1).
The magic seven minutes
Paul van Heeringen of IMPACT on the Job deliberately builds moments like these into his way of working. “If you have a two-hour online meeting, it is almost inhuman to stay focused on that screen full of colleagues for two hours,” he says.
His rule of thumb: a seven-minute break after about three quarters of an hour. Put the clock on the screen, for example with the timer in Microsoft Teams. Invite everyone to get a cup of coffee, look out of the window for a moment or step outside.
“Seven minutes is just long enough to go to the toilet, or to step outside and enjoy the sunshine,” says Paul. “But it is just too short to dive straight back into your email.” According to him, that is the big risk, especially when people feel under pressure: that they use the break to clear some other work after all. Then it does not work.
Small exercises that let your brain rest
You could call it mindfulness, but for many people that word comes with a judgement. It is about small things that let your brain rest for a moment:
- Look out of the window very deliberately, at a tree or a bird sitting in it.
- Step outside, close your eyes and listen to the birds.
- Simply look out of the window without doing anything, and let your thoughts wander.
- Leave your phone alone during the break.
Make wellbeing part of the work
Exercising together or a lunchtime walk is fun and good to do. So by all means make it possible. But also make it part of the work itself, says Paul:
- Build in fixed breaks: seven minutes after three quarters of an hour, with the clock on screen.
- Try a walking meeting. A meeting with two or three people works fine outdoors.
- Have a one-to-one in the fresh air, or meet in a restaurant.
- Don’t spend the whole day at the same spot in the open-plan office.
- If the workload stays too high, a break won’t be enough. Then, as a manager, you need to talk about that.
According to Paul, people who work this way often become more engaged, because their brain is more relaxed. It is busy and there is a lot going on, but you can handle it. You feel fit and energetic in your head.
Also read Work stress is often not about workload: unclear expectations and conflicting demands drain more energy and Your team feels how you slept.
Where is the energy draining away?
With the Employee Engagement Survey (MBO) from Leiders.nl, you can see for each team how much energy there is and where it drains away. That tells you whether to invest in a programme, or in the work itself first.
