Importance of the Tea Break

I recently read an article stating that you were more likely to get a promotion if you regularly made your colleagues tea and coffee. Funnily enough the same article discusses how many employees are reluctant to offer to make colleagues a cup or tea or coffee because individuals have become so demanding in how they take their hot drinks (rightfully so if you ask me!).

One of our Tea Trays

You can imagine what it is like in the Lu Lin Teas office. Thankfully we have our own tea presentation tray and a plethora of teaware to suit all types of tea drinkers (we even have a coffee machine but we try to keep that quiet!). It gets a bit tricky because we all have different favourites and like our teas brewed to different strengths although due to our many teapots and tea strainers we normally resolve the issue by having a few teas on the go at the same time! I don’t know what I’d do if I had to start working in an office where only sub standard teabags were available to me! I’d be stashing tea in my drawer and could never willingly accept the offer of a cuppa from anyone (unless of course it was Tea Cubed)

However, do the cons (your colleague’s precise tastes) outweigh the pros of the tea break or being the one to do the tea round? I would say not. There are many benefits to the sanctity of the tea break and I think it goes hand in hand with the sanctity of tea itself. We all love a good sit down or catch up with a cup of tea at home so why should we deny ourselves this joy while at work. Some research suggests that this few minutes of socialising a day can actually increase productivity at work.  It’s a combination of moving around; socialising and the caffeine consumption (although apparently this only improves productivity when you are tired and your productivity would be lower).

Yixing Tea Set

Whether it is proved by science or not I think that every office worker would agree that without their coffee or tea break their productivity would go down. It provides a type of job satisfaction that if it was taken away would negatively affect workers (read about Herzbergs Motivation - Hygiene Theory for more information on this).

All this talk of tea breaks is reminding me, it is prime tea break time! Better take a pen and paper so I get all the orders right.

Thanks for reading!

Hannah