Long Coffee Breaks a Waste of Time on 3AW 693 AM Radio Melbourne with Tony Moclair

By Sue Ellson

Topic: Long Coffee Breaks a Waste of Time

Date: 5 December 2024

Media Outlet: 3AW 693AM Melbourne https://www.3aw.com.au

Broadcaster / Interviewer: Tony Moclair

Producer: Bianca Johnston

Duration: 00:08:34

Time of show: 13:32pm

Audio Recording:

YouTube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZY75MjVq3s

Long Coffee Breaks a Waste of Time on 3AW 693 AM Radio Melbourne with Tony Moclair and Sue Ellson

Transcript

Up next I’m talking to Sue Ellson a Career Expert.

What do you have the right to at work? Coffee time? Cigarette breaks? Vaping breaks?

The reason I say that is because the CEO of a large accounting firm has um teed off about his pet peeve at work and I wonder if it’s something that applies to you? 133693 Right now though Tony Tardio with headlines. Thank you for that Tony Tardio.

Up next. What is the biggest time waster at your work? Is it meetings? Is it uh just chatting to colleagues in the hallway? 133693. Very interesting take on that particular question by the CEO of a large accounting firm and you’ll hear what his thoughts are on it on the other side of this break. It’s 28 minutes to two.

The boss of a leading accounting firm has declared that long coffee breaks are quote, “A huge waste of time and efficiency.” A man named Greg Keith who is CEO of the firm Grant Thornton is not a huge fan of uh large groups of employees going for their daily brew. He was asked on a podcast what his pet peeve was as CEO and I’ll be speaking to Sue Ellson Career Expert in a moment uh about his reaction and I’m keen to know from you 133693 what you think is the biggest time waster in your office?

Anyway, here is Greg Keith explaining what he doesn’t like in his office.

What’s your pet hate in the office? Going downstairs to grab a coffee and seeing 15 people in one of the teams lining up waiting for the 15th person to get their coffee before they all go back upstairs again and I feel that you know when we brought in our nine day fortnight, it was really to tackle those sorts of issues and to say to people well if we can use our time more efficiently um we’ll give that time back to you. In bringing in the nine day fortnight, we have created a number of avenues both directly but also for them to send in suggestions on how we can actually improve those efficiencies so it’s about us listening and and not telling in that regard.

There you go. The CEO of a big firm saying the coffee breaks are quote “a huge waste of time and efficiency.” What do you think? 133693 What is the biggest time thief at your work? I’d love to know. 133693. And uh is a trip to the nearby cafe uh is it as sacred as a trip to the bathroom? 133693.

Joining me to discuss the well the ins and outs of this Sue Ellson, Career Expert. Good afternoon Sue.

Hi Tony.

Sue it’s a thorny one and in the um the comments section on Sky News.

Mmm.

As often as the case as you would appreciate these things break down not on uh gender lines not that it would but on generational lines. Did you find that interesting?

I did and there was a lot of comments about this is a typical Boomer comment.

Yeah.

And so on but I remember I’m not quite a Boomer but definitely in my early career we had morning and afternoon tea breaks and they were official times off.

Yep.

And they were everyone expected it. Mmm hmm. And uh and they went as long as they went and then you went back to work. But, so is is the gripe of this particular CEO is it because we’ve given you a 9-day fortnight you don’t then come to work to dilly dally and get a coffee.

Yeah it’s an interesting one. I think you can’t really join the two things together.

Okay.

The nine day fortnight is really good at improving retention because it means that people have time to fit in all those extra things they’ve got to do with their life and when you consider most families have two parents working there’s no one home to pick up all the medical appointments and the birthday party organizing and all those sorts of things.

So the nine day fortnight is more a life management thing whereas I see the coffee break as more of a time management thing through the day. So in the workplaces where I was, it was really noisy. People were talking on the telephone.

Yep.

People were having conversations. Now everybody’s tap tap tapping at a keyboard or a screen or that sort of environment and offices are largely silent. Now Greg Keith has turned around and said that he’s added up the numbers you know being an accountant obviously he would do that.

Mmm.

So he’s worked out 15 people out of the office for 30 minutes you know and the time and adding it up he calculated over $300 per day in lost revenue so you can imagine he’s looking at that and saying well the numbers don’t stack up. But I’d say perhaps another time waster, and this would be my pet hate, is how much people spend time on their phones or using their computer to do a little bit of online shopping at work or you know and not much just office workers I mean there’s obviously other workers as well but the coffee break could also be today’s version of the grapevine, because as you would know we used to gossip.

Yeah.

You know stories would get around and and maybe that the the coffee break is is the new form of the grapevine.

Well there’s other ways of looking at it too and just borrowing from the comments in the Sky News article that um the the assumption by Greg Keith is that no work at all is being done or that no benefit to the company accrues from these 15 people all getting together. Now it could be team building, they could be discussing a work problem.

Yep.

I guess um is I mean is it all about his assumptions rather than anything?

Well it could be and it would be interesting to know whether he gets to go out for external meetings.

Yeah.

And break up his day on on a regular basis because a lot of these people are sort of that they would possibly feel chained to the desk and you know that’s a different feeling as well but the cognitive load that if you’re staring at a screen for hours on end, I mean there’s only so long that you can actually do that and so I I would also say the coffee break I remember I had a contract one time and there was a number of contractors who went on coffee breaks with the internal management.

Now those people had their contracts extended and I didn’t because I was busy back at the desk working away and I thought that’s interesting.

Yeah.

So it’s almost like you’ve got to have those conversations with the managers and the other people to sort of win brownie points for the next promotion as well.

So I imagine there’s a lot of cohesiveness happening in that in that environment. Okay. So when it comes to the workplace, what would you regard as uh time wasters? Things that didn’t aid uh the business?

Mmm.

Would I mean you could argue if you had to sit through some interminable uh diversity equity and inclusion seminar. A lot of people would regard that as a complete waste of time.

Well I remember falling asleep in a a session to learn about fire risk training or something or another awful.

Okay. Right.

So look at it depends on the trainer. So look there are many different ways to measure productivity and to also improve productivity and I think we need to be able to continue those dialogues and and Greg Keih said he’s invited his employees to come in and provide suggestions so getting them to look at it and saying look I’ve noticed that this is a big time sap um would it be better if we had a coffee machine in the office?

Yep.

Like there’s there’s lots of little things that you could consider are time wasters. I mean even the fact that he said, in the comments, there was something about um everybody’s waiting for everybody to get their coffee before the meeting can start. So you imagine, eight people sitting at a table doing nothing.

Yeah.

For five to 10 minutes before everybody gets there that’s a time waster you know there’s so many things that could be classified as time wasters and every time you switch tasks it can take you sort of 20 minutes to get your brain back into productive mode.

Yeah.

So even the design of your work. If you’re getting interrupted by phone calls and can’t have that one-on-one time and then we’ve got to say well is that woke or is that genuine?

Yeah.

I mean you know we could go on on these endless arguments so I think really and truly it boils down to the fact let’s all have conversations, let’s say I’ve noticed this, you know is there something we can do about this? Can we streamline it a bit way?

Yeah. What are you really trying to achieve with it and and create those dialogues because he said that the nine-day fortnight has actually increased the retention of employees and that’s a really great thing.

Always great to chat Sue Ellson, Career Expert and uh I’m glad we didn’t do it over a coffee because I don’t want to be yelled at by the boss um Thank you Sue

Social Share

COFFEE BREAKS // Gemma Crotty, Digital Reporter at Sky News reported on the recent Australian Financial Review’s ’15 Minutes with the Boss’ podcast hosted by Sally Patten and comments made by Greg Keith, CEO of Grant Thornton Australia about the ‘huge waste of time and efficiency’ of lengthy coffee breaks. It generated a lot of online comments.

I discussed this topic on 3AW 693 AM Radio Melbourne with Tony Moclair and we explored

✅ generational comments about tea breaks
✅ nine-day fortnight and increased retention rates
✅ life and time management
✅ loss of revenue versus cohesiveness opportunity
✅ other time wasters at work
✅ importance of having conversations

Enjoy the show online at https://sueellson.com/blog/long-coffee-breaks-a-waste-of-time-on-3aw-693-am-radio-melbourne-with-tony-moclair

This link also includes further information you may find helpful.

Thanks to Producer Bianca Johnston for reaching out!

➡️ What do you think about long coffee breaks for staff?

➡️ Would a nine-day fortnight stop you from having breaks?

I would love to continue this discussion and hear your perspectives.

#3awmelbourne #coffeebreak #productivity #sueellson #tonymoclair