The Right Kind of Break: Corporate Wellness Made Easy

 

There are countless stories of the “horrible boss,” the “sadistic manager,” and the “incompetent CEO.” These archetypal figures are grossly overpaid and under-worked, leaving their staff feeling both undervalued and stressed. Perhaps these images weren’t simply born out of the wild imaginations of a few disgruntled employees over the years, but we know that sometimes management has no choice but to play “the bad guy.”

Being in management is difficult. A manager is responsible (at least in part) for the success of the business, and few things are more stressful than feeling culpable for the actions of other people. When something goes wrong, it falls on the shoulders of management to dole out the bad news. If the company can’t survive without downsizing, the manager has to choose who gets the boot. And even when everything is going smoothly on a corporate level, employees might still just be unhappy; and more often than not, a negative work culture probably looks like the fault of management.

Is the staff’s happiness and satisfaction at work truly under the manager’s purview? Maybe not in so many words, but their productivity and engagement might be--and unhappy people are 12% less productive than their happy counterparts (http://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/35451/1/522164196.pdf).  Not only is mood important for day-to-day performance, but it can reasonably be assumed that people who enjoy being at work are less likely to take sick days unnecessarily or be looking to move on to another company the second their contracts are up.

But how can a manager feasibly take on responsibility for the mental well-being of their staff members? Recent research at the University of Cincinnati suggests that it might be as simple as employers allowing their employees a few online breaks throughout the day. Breaks can refresh and rejuvenate mentally exhausted employees, helping them to keep up a positive attitude and workflow throughout the day. Giving employees even a short change of pace to focus on something fun or uplifting can make a world of difference in bringing both positivity and productivity into the workplace.

Of course, giving employees the opportunity to spend an unspecified amount of time in the limitless expanse of the Internet during the workday has the potential to have the opposite effect on productivity. Moreover, it would be hard to track how much of a positive difference these breaks were truly making on an individual employee’s sense of wellbeing.

However, using UpJoy, management has a way to limit the amount of break time, while empirically tracking the emotional impact of each employee’s break. Corporate wellness has always been positive for the employee; now it can be simple and cost effective too.