Unveiling the True Cost of Skipping Lunch Breaks

Let's dive into a topic that is a personal bugbear of mine and one which I’m really trying to get staff to engage with in wellbeing sessions with me – the much neglected lunch break. 🥪⏰🫣

We all know the drill, but have you ever stopped to think about the potential impact, not just on your well-being, but also on your pocket?

Let’s say you work around 22 days a month and instead of taking a 30 minute lunch break, you’re grabbing something and eating at your desk whilst trying to get through your emails, or worse, you’re not bothering to eat at all.

Quick math, 30 minutes per day is 2.5 hours per week if you’re full time, and that's anything from 10 to 12 hours PER MONTH that you have worked through lunch. OK, what's the biggie? You’re massively busy, this helps get things done, right?

Let's put a £ sign on it – your hourly wage multiplied by those 11 hours. How much is the financial cost of your non-lunch break? (Side note, do you know what your hourly salary is? If not, divide your weekly salary by the number of hours you work per week. This should give you your hourly pay rate or visit a calculation site here)

Another way to look at this is to ask yourself how much money you are donating back to your employer per month by not taking those lunch breaks.

I’m always banging on about this subject, and it's usually from a wellbeing angle, because as much as we think we’re being more productive by working through breaks, actually, the opposite is true- our brains slow down without break time, and our creativity, problem solving ability and compassion have all been shown to decline when we’re tired. But this information alone doesn’t seem to be motivating people to start taking breaks, so I thought I’d bring money into it.

So I’d love to know… how much are you donating to your employer each month, and each year?!