Lost art of doing lunch

By STEVE HART

Remember lunch? That full hour away from the desk with plenty of time to socialise, have something to eat, a drink, a slow walk back to work with time left to read a little. And either side of that were two tea breaks.

It seems lunch hours are starting to disappear as more people choose to take a snack at their desk.

And the morning and afternoon break enjoyed by most full time workers is also taking a bashing - lost with a coffee at the desk where we can continue to work.

A new survey reveals that one in five people don't take a lunch break. While women over 45 are more likely to do lunch, a quarter choose to work through.

The British survey carried out for catering firm Eurest, which also runs staff restaurants in New Zealand, revealed that those who do tear themselves away from the office for lunch take only around 27 minutes with most women taking 25 minutes.

Mercer HR Consulting in New Zealand carried out a survey of more than 20,000 people working in 60 organisations and discovered that - like Britain - we are slowly losing our lunch breaks. And John Ellen, the firm's principal consultant, has two theories: pressure of work and the disappearance of work canteens.

"If you are in a management job the answer is probably yes, you are losing your lunch break because of the increased pressure to perform.

"In the 1970s most workplaces in New Zealand had some form of lunch or dining room facility and they are largely disappearing. Having an onsite cafe for workers encourages lunch breaks.

"If there is nowhere to sit and eat your lunch, and you brought your lunch from home, then you will sit at your desk and eat it."

His firm's survey also shows that workers in Wellington are more likely to take a lunch break than those in Auckland.

"Mainly because in Wellington you are more likely to meet people at lunch time because the CBD is more compact than Auckland's.

"Also, there are more public servants there who are more likely to take lunch if they are covered by a collective agreement."

Ellen says it seems the baby boomers appear to be leading the way in skipping lunch.

"The baby boomers, who heard all the stories of the depression but never experienced it and also have experience of the freedom of individual contracts, stay at their desks and keep working."

Working through lunch also throws up another issue - that of unpaid overtime. There is evidence to show that people, particularly those working in offices and financial services, are not paid all the overtime they are entitled to including the lunch breaks they work through.

Ellen says his survey, which was carried out in June, shows that of the senior executive and managers who responded, none claimed overtime.

But 26 per cent of professional staff were paid overtime while 61 per cent were expected to work the hours required to do their job with no option for overtime payments.

He says 66 per cent of operational staff, typically those working below management, said they were paid overtime.

"[Being paid overtime] depends on the nature of the contractual relationship. If you are unionised and in a collective, you are far more likely to get paid for overtime," says Ellen.

"At the moment we would suggest that given there is reasonably full employment, that if people were unhappy then the rate of staff turnover would increase."

He says average turnover runs at between 10 per cent to 15 per cent of the workforce, but his figure for 2003-4 is 16 per cent.

"Most organisations would consider that a little high. But if we look at where the turnover is we can see it is in the operational type roles."

Matthew Fitzsimons, national organiser of Finsec, the trade union for the finance and information industry says unpaid overtime is caused by mean managers trying to keep budgets looking healthy.

He says a survey carried out in April by the National Australia Bank and its affiliates (which includes the BNZ ) appears to show that some New Zealanders work between two and five hours a week that are unpaid.

Respondents, members of the Finsec union, were asked to keep a diary for two weeks and note the hours they worked that were not paid for.

"Some employers actually encourage people, particularly those in sales, to get in early and stay late," he says. "They are discouraged from asking for overtime, even though they are entitled.

"I know of bank branch managers who have a budget for overtime payments but tell staff there is no money to pay it - these managers want their branch to look more profitable than it really is. Staff working unpaid are subsidising their employer's business."

Fitzsimons says managers put pressure on themselves and work unpaid hours and their staff then follow the lead and don't claim overtime.

"It's not just lunch times and lost tea breaks that causes this," he says.

"It is people arriving early for work and then staying late. Not because they love their jobs, but because they are under pressure to meet targets and deliver results."

Fitzsimons says when employers talk about work-life balance they think of flexi-time, glide time and accommodating people who have child care responsibilities.

"But when we talk about work-life balance, we think of the quality of the whole work experience. If people feel pressured at work and fearful of not meeting targets and skip meal and lunch breaks and work unpaid overtime, then that will have a huge impact on the quality of their work life.

But where did it all go wrong? How is it that with all the technology that surrounds us we are apparently working harder than ever?

Although technology has made some jobs easier and quicker to do, we are doing more of them - instead of using the efficiencies technology offers to take a more relaxed approach to work. Somewhere along the line we've lost the art of lunch time.

Perhaps people arrive early, stay late and skip meal breaks because they enjoy their jobs. Perhaps they simply can't be bothered to go out for lunch preferring to stay at their desk surfing the internet, answering the phone and email.

But there is a simple answer. Come lunch time today, stand up, walk away from the desk, and go out to lunch - resolving not to return until your full hour or half hour entitlement is up. And if you have a staff cafe ... you might want to use it before you lose it. Bon appetit!