Break Room

Use the Break Room to Engage Your Staff

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Use the Break Room to Engage Your StaffYour company has a very valuable asset in the break room. That’s right, your break room can be used as more than just a home for the coffee machine and water cooler. It can be a tool for engaging with your staff. We aim to explain how in this post.

Note that you might not be able to utilize all the suggestions you read here. You may be restricted by available space, your budget, and other things. The point is still the same, though: use your break room to whatever extent you can as a way to engage with your staff. You will all be the better for it.

Conduct Meetings in the Break Room

If you have to choose between a conference room and the break room for team meetings, choose the break room. The break room offers a more casual environment that will put team members at ease. When staff are at ease, they tend to be more willing to collaborate. They are more willing to share their ideas and voice their concerns.

As an added benefit, conducting meetings in the break room means you do not have to carry coffee pots to the conference room. You don’t have to worry about getting that beautiful conference room table dirty, either.

Consider Video Messaging

If your company is large enough, consider adding a video monitor or two to the break room. Video monitors can be hooked to a computer network and used to display important company messages. In between messages, stream the weather report and local news. Video messaging is a terrific way to keep staff members in the loop about all sorts of important things.

Put in Comfortable Furniture

Whether you are having a meeting or workers are taking lunch, nothing will put them more at ease than comfortable furniture. Big tables and plastic chairs have long since lost their luster. Take them out and replace them with furniture that is more conducive to socialization and conversation. Think the local coffee shop here.

Personalize the Environment

Far too many break rooms are cold, impersonal environments that serve only a utilitarian purpose. You can better engage with your staff by personalizing the environment. Put up some interesting pictures accompanied by a few discrete decorations here and there. Even a plant or two would be nice. The goal is to make the break room more like home than the office.

Offer Free Snacks and Beverages

We recommend tying all your engagement efforts together with free snacks and beverages. Studies have shown that this one perk can boost employee satisfaction considerably. Why does this matter? Because satisfied employees are more likely to engage with management and ownership.

Galaxie Coffee has everything you need to stock your break room. We invite you to browse our inventory and then contact us with any questions you have. We would be happy to service your office with a full selection of beverages, snacks, and break room supplies.

How the Break Room Can Increase Employee Engagement

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How the Break Room Can Increase Employee EngagementEmployee engagement is all the rage these days. Engagement has always been necessary, but only recently has the business world come to understand how critical it is to driving long-term stability and growth. The quality of the break room can make all the difference in the world.

Yes, the experience employees have in the break room has an influence on company culture and worker happiness. High-quality coffee products and break room supplies, while not the only factor in determining a company’s culture, should be high on the priority list. What an employee experiences in the break room creates a lasting impression of his or her perception of the company as a whole.

A clean, spacious, and well stocked break room tells employees that their employer cares about them. Coffee may be the focal point of the break room, however, now it’s also about tea and hot chocolate too. Healthy snacks are the newest, most popular item being added to the menu. The break room also provides a space where workers can collaborate over a hot cup of coffee without having to rush back to their work stations. A well-presented break room is a community space that encourages stronger bonds among workers the same way the home kitchen creates strong bonds among family members.

Engagement and Employee Happiness

Lest you suspect we are merely blowing smoke about worker happiness, there is plenty of research data to prove the point. Consider a 2014 study out of the University of Warwick Department of Economics that demonstrates the difference between happy and unhappy workers. Happy workers are 12% more productive than the average worker while unhappy workers are 10% less productive. That is a swing of 22 percentage points.

Additional research from the New Century Financial Corporation shows that unhappy account executives classified as ‘actively disengaged’ generate 28% less revenue than their happy, engaged counterparts. The same holds true throughout the global workforce. Happy employees are engaged employees.

How the Break Room Helps

If you are still not clear on how high-quality coffee and break room supplies increase employee engagement, just look at the phrase itself: break room. Workers go to the break room because they need a few minutes away from the desk. They need to give their brains, and sometimes their bodies, a few minutes to rest.

If your company has a break room that employees do not want to visit, they are less likely to take their breaks. They will eventually feel like they don’t take breaks because they are stuck at the desk. Conversely, giving them a break room they actually want to use encourages them to take the time.

An added bonus is that workers in the break room are only taking a break from their immediate tasks. They still talk shop, share ideas and look for solutions to their problems. That is what makes them more engaged, happier, and ultimately, more productive.

Here at Galaxie Coffee, we take immense pride in stocking break rooms across the greater New York area with high-quality coffee and supplies. We would be happy to fill yours as well.

The Increasing Importance of Having a Break Room

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The Increasing Importance of Having a Break RoomIs there someplace at work you can go when you need to take a break? A surprising study from 2014 showed that a majority of U.S. workers don’t take breaks during the day. Still, many feel they would be more productive if they were able to do so. Enter the employee break room.

There is an old idiom in American office culture that talks about meeting around the water cooler to discuss ideas. Often it’s last night’s Game of Thrones or Blacklist episode that is being discussed. Twenty years ago, this was thought to be a waste of time. In today’s office environment, this collaboration and discussion is looked upon favorably. We would suggest there is a better way to encourage collaboration among employees and allow them to take a break away from their desks and computers: give them a break room. Make it comfortable with great seating, maybe add foosball, air hockey or ping pong – and now you have the environment you’re looking for.

Too Few Taking Breaks

The previously mentioned study conducted in 2014 by Staples showed that 55% of U.S. workers don’t feel they can leave their desks to take a break. Approximately 20% don’t take breaks out of a sense of guilt. Some 59% of survey respondents indicated that more breaks would improve their happiness at work; 43% said more breaks would boost their personal happiness; 37% said regular breaks would improve their health.

Too few people take regular breaks despite the fact that we all know we should. It is not good, either physically or mentally, to sit staring at a computer screen for four straight hours. It is not healthy to be stuck in a cubicle and isolated from other human beings for long stretches of time. Humans need to get up, walk around and interact.

Break Room a Perfect Place

An employee break room is a perfect solution to employees not taking breaks because it combines the best of the office water cooler and meeting room. A break room is space where employees can socialize with one another in a setting free from telephones and e-mail. It is a space that naturally fosters collaboration without employees feeling like they have to do so when they get together.

The reality is that workers will naturally collaborate if you just let them. If you try to force it, collaboration becomes another part of the mundane workday that they have to slog their way through. But if you allow employees to simply be, in a relaxed space that does not constrain them to think or act a certain way, they do naturally what so many companies try to force.

A good break room is an open, comfortable space with plenty of seating, a coffee machine, perhaps a microwave, a refrigerator and don’t forget the games. Never underestimate its power to make your employees more happy and productive during the work day. Galaxie Coffee can help you with beverage service by providing modern, updated equipment and a full line of coffees, teas, and other beverages. We also stock break room supplies as well.