Who would have thought that something as simple as having lunch with your co-workers can actually have a great impact on your wellbeing and career? Over casual conversations, having lunch with your coworkers allows you to get a peek of their true personalities. This can result in better communication and conflict resolution ability. Beyond that, what are the benefits of having lunches with your colleagues?
Believe it or not, your weekday lunch could not just recharge your mind and body, but also refuel your careers. According to Business News Daily, employees who share communal lunches experience improved productivity and morale. A Cornell University study also reveals that eating meals together can boost people’s productivity levels at work. While chats during these enjoyable breaks may not truly help fix all concerns at work, you may feel more calm and relieved when you share and talk about them. Doing so may help you deal with stress over the following stressful hours of the day.
Lunches With Coworkers Boosts Productivity Levels
In today’s highly virtual era, employees frequently pick up monitors and smartphones as their best partners to talk about issues at work, rather than talking to their real colleagues. Technology, indeed, may provide better support and more effective results to answer work-related problems, but if all of it can be resolved over those virtual texts and calls, then would we still need to meet people everyday and care for real human interactions?
Lunch break is a great time to refresh, relax and feel good. Take the workload off your mind for a while, have a real break and start socializing with the people around at work. Such a simple distraction from work will help you feel more motivated to finish the rest of the day. Talking to others and listening to what they have to say can even give you new insights. Having lunch away from your phone and close to your peers helps create a collaborative working environment that increases productivity levels at work and prevents burnouts.
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Effective Networking Tool
It might be difficult to get to know colleagues working in other departments, but lunch time is the perfect hour to expand your network. The lunch hour presents a great networking opportunity to know senior leaders and department heads on a personal individual level. When you know more people in the office, you get to understand different perspectives on the company’s wide goals or brainstorm together for solutions with someone from a very different background.
This can also be the chance for you to ask about possible side-hustle or a project from your coworkers. The more you interact with them, the more trust you gain from them. This can lead to possible opportunities for work or networking. Who would have thought extra income can come from someone as close as your own coworkers?
Helps Create Happy Workplaces
Lunch breaks provide a sense of community in a team and are a perfect opportunity to forget about all of your responsibilities for a while and just relax in between tasks. To build a pleasant workplace atmosphere, everyone, regardless of employment title or length of time with the company, can join in a casual discussion. The joy shared automatically spreads to every team member, perhaps resulting in the friendly work atmosphere that everyone loves!
However, it should be noted that lunchtime should not be filled with gossiping. If any rumour spreads within a team, it will only lead to controversy and chaos on the job. Therefore, avoid gossipping and use lunchtime to relieve existing difficulties instead; let your coworker vent before responding with useful, observable advice. Coworkers who hold different perceptions may meet at lunch to address their differences over a meal. You also need to avoid using lunchtime to whine about the boss, since this simply encourages a “us vs. them” mindset. Instead, invite your supervisor to lunch or offer to bring food to work so you can all eat together. Take advantage of the opportunity to identify common ground in a comfortable situation.
Sharing food and drink with someone creates a particular type of closeness and lunch break is the easiest time to do this. The type of connection that may develop via eating together has importance in terms of business communication and teamworks. Leave your laptop and phone during the lunch time and engage in a small talk with your fellow colleagues over tasty meals. You never know that this will give you more and more reason to stay in your company.
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