Surviving the Workday

Several studies show that in order to increase “productivity,”* it is important to provide workers time for breaks, including around the water cooler. Through using badges with mics to monitor interactions, scientists recorded sociability as well as work habits:

….we monitored IT workers and their productivity using similar badges. Once again, we found that group cohesion was a central predictor of productivity. In fact, workers whose group cohesion was in the top third showed an increase in work productivity of more than 10%. In addition, workers who had access to more people, that is, their network of company contacts was larger, also demonstrated increased productivity. In this case, workers whose network access was in the top third of the group showed an additional productivity increase of 4%

So although you may feel guilty about time spent around the water cooler, it’s important to being human to connect with one another (and leads to an increase in “productivity.”)

*Productivity will be shown in scare quotes as it’s notoriously difficult to measure.