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Is the lunch hour gone forever?
These days, people seem to spend less of their lunch break relaxing and more time working. Many attribute their willingness to work through lunch to the poor economy & need for job security. Has the global recession and shaky job market eliminated the lunch hour forever? Will the mid-day break return once the economy rebounds?
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4 Answers
Seems you are right. There is no consideration for any time in distributed environments: either here or on the East coast it will be lunch, so why to bother :-(
Sadly, I think this is slowly going to be the case pretty much everywhere. It has long been a thing of the past in the UK and even in France (where they have always held dear to things like this) it is starting to be eroded too.
If I'm honest I don't think this is a bad thing per se, as long as there is an overall level of flexibility in the working relationship. When it is all one way, it is a recipe for ill health and demotivation.
Lunch hour didn't disappear due to the global recession so much as it did due to the disappearance of the forty hour work week.
When I started in IT in the late 80's, the work day was 37 hours with no overtime. Nowadays, the average IT employee is at least doing 50 and therefore maximizing usage of time has become a higher priority.
One of my fave subjects! I think lunch and other breaks are essential for a productive workplace. That doesn't mean they have to happen each and every day but lose them and lose out. I scribbled a short blog post for HRZone a few days ago about an HR team doing great work to keep the lunch flag flying. Here's the link in case you and your readers are interested:
http://www.hrzone.co.uk/blogs/doug-shaw/what-goes-around/keep-lunch-interesting
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