When you were building your business, you may feel like you never sat down to take a break, but you still had to take time out to eat a meal or grab a cup of coffee and decompress for a few minutes before moving to the next task. These moments of relaxation and break time helped to revitalize and re-energize you to keep going.
The same kind of down time is true to your employees’ productivity and happiness as well, and happy and productive employees are key to the success of your business. Creating a relaxing place to step away from work for a short time and regroup or de-stress before returning to work is a step in the right direction.
Gone are the days of a white-walled room with a table, chairs, and a couple of vending machines or a coffee maker. You want to create a space that’s welcoming and encourages relaxation, even for a short time.
Table of Contents
Layout & Focus
Things to Include
Coffee Station
Snack Bar
Kitchenette
Comfortable Seating
Exercise Equipment
TV
Bulletin Board
Seasonal Decor
Quiet Room
Natural Light
Activities
Video Games
Board Games
Ping Pong
Shuffleboard
Community Puzzle
Events
Coffee of the Week
Team Lunches
Pot Luck
Accessibility
Final Thoughts
Layout & Focus
How you design your break room depends on the physical limitations of your space. However, a lack of space doesn’t mean you can’t have a relaxing and refreshing room. If your business is a restaurant or coffee shop, you’ll want the focus of your break room to be something other than food and drink. If you’re a tech company, you may want a room void of electronic devices, computers, and the like.
In addition to layout and focus, the break room should be far enough away from work areas so that employees chatting or making noise like preparing food or drinks, or watching TV don’t distract colleagues still hard at work.
Things to Include
You don’t have to include everything on this list. Talk to your employees and find out what they’d like from a break room, and do your best to incorporate the most-requested features.
Coffee Station
Even if your business is in the food industry, coffee is often the thing that keeps your employees going throughout the day. Simply upgrading the basic coffee machine to a station that allows employees to make their own coffee, espresso, latte, cappuccino, or macchiato is an easy and inexpensive way to enhance a smaller break room or area.
It’s a smart idea to provide coffee basics like creamer and sugar, too. Make sure to budget for periodic refreshment of supplies including coffee, creamer, cups, sugar, and whatever other items you intend to offer. Save both waste and cost by requiring employees to use reusable mugs rather than paper or styrofoam cups. A one-time cost of company-branded coffee mugs for each employee is a great incentive and a way to incorporate green practices in your business without much effort.
Snack Bar
Hand-in-hand with a coffee station is a snack bar. While coffee will keep employees awake and ready to go, having access to a quick snack like protein bars, whole fruits, nuts, and other grab-and-go snacks will add an extra boost of energy to get through a sluggish afternoon.
Rather than making a monthly trip to a warehouse club, consider a service to replenish the snack bar on a set schedule to ensure the snack bar is fully-stocked and keep the fresh foods provided fresh from week to week.
When considering snack bar selections, plan for dietary needs and preferences like vegan, gluten-free, or nut-free options. Opt for prepackaged foods to eliminate the allergen from the air and keep employees safe and healthy while enjoying a well-deserved break.
Kitchenette
A coffee station and snack bar aren’t complete without a kitchenette. A small counter space with a microwave and a fridge/freezer are helpful additions that allow employees to store and heat up food when necessary. A fridge allows employees to keep beverages including bottled water cold and refreshing for when they need it, and a freezer and microwave allow employees to bring single-serve frozen meals and last night’s dinner leftovers to warm up for a hot meal on the job.
Comfortable Seating
Employees may have “executive” chairs or task chairs, or may have older chairs that become uncomfortable after just a couple hours of sitting. Retail or restaurant businesses require employees to do a lot of standing or walking, taking a toll on the feet, legs, and back. Creating a break area with comfortable seating goes a long way to helping employees relax and stretch out the aches that prevent them from performing at their best. Consider offering a variety of seating options, if possible, too, including:
– Benches
– Couches
– Hammocks
– Ottomans
– Picnic tables
– Stools
– Swing chairs
Exercise Equipment
We’re not talking about a full-blown gym or yoga studio, with enough space you can create an exercise area filled with yoga mats, medicine balls, dumb bells, and other small exercise equipment to give your gym rat employees the opportunity to workout their stress and return to work refreshed.
TV
Most of today’s televisions have streaming capabilities built in, so they won’t be hard to find, but streaming services will allow employees to sit back and relax with their favorite show or content.
If you’d rather not pay for streaming services, you can tune the TV to local news, classic sitcoms, or a movie employees can watch for a few minutes while they have a drink or a meal. Keep the volume low or muted, and turn on closed captions so employees can follow the stories without bothering their working colleagues should the break room be near work spaces.
Bulletin Board
All of your employees will likely pass through the break room at some point during their day. Whether it’s to grab a coffee or snack, or sit down and rest, they’ll find themselves there at the very least once a day. The break room is the optimum place to post office-wide news and reminders. Notices about training days, company retreats, team building, charity events, and more can be posted here with a guarantee of nearly every employee setting eyes on your most crucial announcements.
Seasonal Decor
Include holiday or seasonal cheer in the break room. Winter holiday decorations, fun fall decorations, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, and more can be acknowledged or celebrated with a few decorations around the break room.
Quiet Room
If you have the space, consider a quiet room as well as a break room. Break rooms can still buzz with activity, noise, and discussion as employees relax and interact with each other on a personal level. Other employees may need to unplug completely and spend some time in the quiet to reset. A quiet room can benefit everyone, since even your most outgoing employees need some quiet from time to time.
Natural Light
The amount of natural light you can take advantage of depends on your office layout and where you plan to put your break room. Many companies take advantage of natural light for work spaces to boost employee morale and productivity while working. But the benefits of natural light aren’t just for increasing work productivity. It’s also been shown to boost employee morale and happiness, so adding natural light to your break room is nothing but a plus! Not only do your employees get the relaxation of a break, they get the benefits and rejuvenation brought by exposure to natural light.
Bring natural lights into your break room space with large windows, sliding glass doors, or even skylights. There are several models of skylight that tilt open with the touch of a button to let fresh air in as well.
Activities
While some employees may just want off their feet for a while, others may want some other form of interaction, just away from the desks and collaboration spaces meant for working. Gen Z workers (people born 1997-2010) have entered or are entering the professional workforce, and are bringing their preferences for work/life balance and a different way of relaxation at the office with them. They have some pretty creative ideas for decompressing at the office, including:
Video Games
My son takes a seat firmly in Gen Z. Born in 2006, he’s just over 18 years old and will be off to college next fall, but his love of video games and all things electronics is (rightly or wrongly) as ingrained in his personality as much as his dedication to Scouting has been. He’s interested in video game design, and nearly chose a school that had a stellar program and an eSports team that was recruiting him with a scholarship. He was ready to sign, but then his first-choice school accepted him and he quickly left that other school in the dust. After combing through all his chosen school’s programs, he’s settled on architecture with an emphasis in digital modeling – a professional path that leads to both architecture as well as the potential for game design. He’ll be multi-talented and multi-trained for a professional future that will take him many places. I know for a fact he’d jump at the chance to work for a company that provided video games in the break room.
There are many ways to provide video games in your break room, from full size cabinets found in arcades, to gaming consoles hooked up to TVs. Add in a variety of games for the system or systems provided and you have a winning formula for a fun break room.
Board Games
Possibly not as popular as video games, nor as easily playable in short increments, board games are another fun addition to your break room. Colleagues can sit around a table playing games like Yahtzee, Trivial Pursuit, Monopoly, and more. Games like checkers or chess, where employees passing through can make a move as they walk by are more games to include in the game library.
Ping Pong
No one wants to work up a sweat with gym activities while they’re dressed for business meetings or face-to-face customer service. This lower-effort but still physical activity can help shed the physical and mental stress of the workday for a few minutes.
It can be a casual, friendly game at break time, or you may see employees organizing a tournament or after-hours play – make sure to use that bulletin board to announce the tournament!
Shuffleboard
My son’s school has an area called the CLA, short for Center for Learning and Achievement. It used to be the library, but when things went digital out of necessity, physical books were replaced with iPads and apps. To adapt to the times, the school decided to eliminate the library and its books in favor of this more flexible learning space.
There are several rooms for different purposes, and a large area for collaborative learning or studying. There’s also a small area carved out for recreation. Built-in sofa style seating in school colors, a sports ticker to stay up-to-date on the latest scores and news, and a compact shuffleboard table. Multiple TVs/monitors broadcast school announcements, or can be hooked up to computers or consoles for presentations or use by the video game club.
Although I’ve never heard of or seen anyone playing, it’s a different option for students to unwind and de-stress from the school day either during break periods like lunch or after school.
Community Puzzle
Much like board games where the whole office can passively play by making a move whenever they walk by, community puzzles are a way for employees to switch gears for a moment away from work.
A large puzzle, say 750+ pieces, is a challenge everyone can work together to solve. Employees can sit and work the puzzle for long periods, or sit for just a few minutes and put together a small section.
Puzzle building also promotes teamwork and collaborative problem solving since just about everyone in the office has had a chance to contribute to the puzzle’s completion. If you want to keep it work-related, choose a puzzle that depicts something related to the industry. While you won’t necessarily find a puzzle for interior design, there are plenty of puzzles that depict scenes like kitchens, bedrooms, and more – which are related to interior design.
Events
If your designated break room area is big enough, you may be able to host after-hours events there. While you won’t want to host the company holiday party in the break room, there are several events that can encourage interactions between colleagues who may not work together much, or allow employees to get to know each other outside the business-only team of your current project. Here are a few:
Coffee of the Week
If your break room has a coffee machine (what break room doesn’t?!), consider allowing your employees to choose the coffees and flavors. Host a coffee tasting with multiple brands and flavors and have employees gather and choose their favorites.
Tally up the votes and begin stocking their favorites.
Team Lunches
If you have several teams working on different projects, the team comes together often to plan and execute the project, but may split off for breaks or lunches in private or with others in the office.
If your break room has the space to allow it, encourage each team to hold a weekly lunch together to get to know each other outside of projects. No one has to go into their life story in-depth, but knowing more than a colleague’s skill set can help teams work better together, as they can navigate and take advantage of personal strengths that aren’t directly related to the task at hand.
Pot Luck
I worked third shift at a company for several years. One of the highlights of the week was Wednesday night – better known as Food Night. We were a fairly small crew, and each person would bring in something to contribute to the food table. Bags of chips, tacos, fast food burgers, or homemade treats were all welcome on the table and usually demolished by morning.
Host a pot luck in the break room where each employee can bring their favorite dish to pass around. Employees can come in on breaks or lunches and enjoy the different offerings rather than the regular snacks from the snack bar or bag lunch from home.
If hosting a pot luck, provide paper products like paper towels, plates, and (potentially) plasticware. These items may already be on hand if you’ve incorporated a coffee bar or snack bar. Just make sure they’re replenished frequently.
Accessibility
Just as the rest of your office is accessible for those who need it, your break room should be, too. Plan for the visible as well as invisible limitations of your employees with ergonomic furnishings and other helpful amenities that will go unnoticed until they’re not there.
Final Thoughts
Creating a work environment where employees feel comfortable and cared about includes not just working spaces but a place to relax for a short time to come back to work refreshed. You can incorporate as many or as few of these suggestions as you wish, but remember to talk to employees about what meets their needs best.
Once you know what you’re looking for, we at Realty Asset Advisors can help you create a warm, welcoming, and relaxing break room where everyone will want to spend time.
Contact us today!
