Working Wednesday: Lunch Breaks

There was a time when people worked mainly at or from home and eating lunch was not a problem. You truly had a "cottage" industry or you lived on a farm. Perhaps you were a member of a skilled trade and took a lunch knapsack to work.

Then came the Industrial Revolution. Everyone moved away from their food sources to the big cities. Our Western Culture "advanced" and many found employment behind or beside a machine. "Human" Resources really depended upon individual company owners.

So now in 2012 we are once again talking about lunch breaks. Some articles to consider reading are:
1. California Supreme Court's ruling about employees not having to take a lunch break: http://blog.al.com/wire/2012/04/court_managers_dont_have_to_en.html

2. More workers having to work through their lunch break: http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/story/2012-04-15/lunch-at-work/54167808/1

For small business owners, here are some ideas to ponder about:
1. Most doctors/health care professionals recommend eating more than twice a day (breakfast/dinner).
2. How dependent are you for your team to stay fresh (brain) and active(physical)? Follow-up: Do your jobs require much repetition of either and how quickly?
3. Is high turnover part of your business plan?

Solutions
Assuming you still want to give your employees lunch breaks off the clock, with them not electing to work through them, here are some suggestions. Of course, an employee committee would be helpful:
1. have a physical work out space, basketball hoop, ping ball table, card table (for card games, non-gambling type such as Bridge, Hearts, Euchre).
2. Reading area with large comfortable chairs, e-books loan check out, computer bank and earphones for music.
3. create a lunch room with a global environment. Sometimes it looks like a forest, desert, mountains, seasons of the year, outside a Ski lodge, etc. You can do this easily enough now with internet projections on walls.
All of these could be sized up or down depending upon your size of company.

Another idea not related to lunch breaks but if everyone is working harder and harder, is to give each employee a budget to decorate their working space. This would include paint, lighting, framed art, etc. depending of course on company guidelines, fire codes, etc. If you have a factory setting or open space, then I would suggest having a committee and using one of the ideas above for common use areas.

Don't assume that you can give your employees so much work they will opt to bypass their lunch each day. They worked through (and are still working through) the Great Recession just like you and know the score. Get a committee going, invest in your people resource, and you will see the ROI very soon.