Take a break

Published on 21 May 2006

If you want to work harder, first kick off you shoes and have a cup of tea away from your desk, says Ann Clarke of Claremont Group.

We Brits work the longest hours in Europe. Nearly 46 per cent of men and 32 per cent of women work more hours than they are contracted for. At the top end of the labour market, 40 per cent of managers and 30 per cent of professionals work over 50 hours a week. We work an average of 8.7 hours per day compared to around 8 hours a day for the French and Germans.

You can complain about this but at least it means we’re more productive than our indolent European brothers, aren’t we? Well, no.

In fact, UK workers remain less productive than their counterparts in Germany and France. Output per hour worked is almost 20 per cent below that of France and Germany according to a recent report from by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

There are many explanations given for this apparent dichotomy, including the argument that the UK suffers from a poorer skills base. However one obvious difference lies in our willingness to work long, often unpaid overtime. Little wonder then that the average British lunch ‘hour’ is now a mere 27 minutes long.

We seem to be perfectly aware that this is counterproductive. Nearly three quarters of people working over forty-eight hours a week claim that their work takes them longer and their performance suffers as a result. People working in creative jobs can only maintain a high level of performance for around 32 hours a week.

No wonder we have decreasing levels of job satisfaction. Over the nineties the number of men reporting that they were very happy with their hours fell from 35 per cent to 20 per cent and for women from 51 per cent to 29 per cent.

One of the most curious aspects of all this is that we work in ways we know to be ineffective even when we have increasing control of our working time. According to the European Working Conditions Survey, the UK enjoys Europe’s fourth highest level of autonomy in working hours (just behind Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands and well ahead of France and Germany).

The puzzle is that we know it’s wrong, we know it doesn’t work, we know it makes us feel bad and yet we still do it even when we have control over our own working time. So how can we unravel this Gordian knot that ties us to our desks?

The answers are bound up in our culture. But we at Claremont are not in the business of changing the world. One thing we can change is the workplace. Certainly workplace design has developed over recent years to reflect the growing concern about individual wellness as well as to try to mitigate the impact of a long-hours culture. For example, greater knowledge of the impact of the working environment means that subjects such as colour psychology are taken seriously at board level. The impact of more domestic designs has also had an impact on the way people respond to the places they work.

One thing that we have seen develop very rapidly in recent years is the provision of break-out space in many offices. Such spaces are designed to give people a chance to get away from their computer screens (and possibly their colleagues), to think about something different to look at a different environment and even to see some sky and get some fresh air. The most important thing about break-out space is that it signals to employees that having a cup of tea and reading the paper is just as important part of the working day as clearing your Inbox. This resolves at a stroke the doublethink that allows people to work without breaks even though they know it means they do less and worse work. Break-out space also allows people to change their view of the organisation because it brings them into social contact with people from different backgrounds, disciplines and departments and so makes new links within the organisation.

For all the theorising about work-life balance (which in any case seems to rest on the crude untruth that work and life are two separate things, one of which is good and the other bad) the office is where we spend a considerable proportion of our time. It also structures our time, gives us a sense of purpose, provides a sense of belonging to the organisation and offers us social contact with other people. What we need to add to that heady mix is a sense that we do not stop being human the moment we enter a building. We need time to relax, breathe, think, talk and smile. We need to take a break.

Ann Clarke is Design Director of Claremont Group Interiors.