Riskex Reflections on a Friday #11: The virtues of holding regular workplace coffee mornings
The well-known annual McMillan Coffee Morning not only provides a great fundraising opportunity for the charity, but McMillan coffee mornings organised in the workplace provide valuable downtime for your team. Downtime is essential for increasing attention, boosting mood, unlocking creativity, and solving problems. It’s also necessary for improving learning and memory and restoring mental health at work.
A recent article in Psychology Today talked about the need for fewer emails and more coffee breaks. They showed through extensive research that by spending more time having a coffee break and talking rather than simply sending an email can have a 10 – 15% increase in workers’ productivity. It promotes cohesion between fellow employees which is a major factor in not only increased productivity but also in job satisfaction.
The coffee break is an ideal opportunity to become more successful in your role by sharing details about how to deal with specific situations, sharing tips and promoting communication, collaboration and conversation.
Organised social meetings like “coffee mornings” aren’t exclusive to in-person working environments – in a hybrid working world, providing opportunities for team members to “connect” with each other is even more important. So, whilst you’re sipping your cappuccino, plan one interactive and inclusive activity that you will introduce in your next online team “coffee morning” to make it a fun and collaborative one – for inspiration look at the 11 best virtual coffee break ideas blog below.
