Based on my professional working experience, I found many people have long been used to consuming at least one meal a day (classically lunch) outside their home because of the distances between workplace and home. The limited time of work break does not allow one to return to their home. Well, not having a structured meal consumption opportunity available can generate by there are frequent but trivial and risky dietary errors. Very often, the lunch break at the workplace is thought of a moment “frugal” and little significant, which can lead to “easy & quick” choices rather than “proper & suitable ones”.
I observed many of my young colleagues completely give up on meals at work, believing they can then compensate with the meal at home. For me, lunch at work represents a fundamental moment both in terms of health individuals with work performance. Consuming inadequate, insufficient, or too many meals abundant, in addition to the obvious health implications arising from incorrect eating habits, it can interfere with attention & concentration abilities, worsening performance work-related and establishing, in the case of particular risky jobs (e.g. driving vehicles or use of machinery), a hazard element.
I remember whilst on job attachment at the head office of Toyobo Co. Ltd in Osaka, Japan, I was served with the bento box - a neatly compartmentalized container daily for a healthy staff's lunch. Bento lunches remain a staple of Japanese working life, often complete with intricate details together with tea.
As HRD practitioner, I consider there are many human elements of structured lunch for the workforce to focus more on the ‘softer’ aspects of work, such as building better and more productive relationships both within and without their organizations. And there are few more satisfactory ways of doing that than over a good lunch. As the late, great preeminent business philosopher and the father of modern management & guru, Dr. Peter Drucker once put it: “More business decisions occur over lunch than at any other time, and yet no MBA courses are given on the subject.”
Zulkifly Baharom (hajizul50@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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