The Effect of Planned Breaks on Worker Productivity and the Moderate Role of Workload in a Manufacturing Environment

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to empirically explore the impact of planned breaks on employee productivity and the moderate role of workload in a manufacturing environment. The dataset for this research, which comprises 3043985 records, was collected from assembly lines in a manufacturing company, and the Prais–Winsten regression model was used to empirically analyze the relationship between productivity and breaks. The results showed that productivity improved during the 30 minutes before the start of a break, which mainly resulted from employees’ expectations of the upcoming break and the alleviation of any negative emotions due to their current work. It was also found that productivity declined during the 30 minutes after the end of a break due to the dominating effect of forgetting the recent rest and having a disordered work rhythm in the manufacturing environment. Additionally, it was noticed that a lighter workload mitigated the negative post-break impact on productivity while reinforcing the pre-break positive impact on productivity. The results implicate that managers should schedule breaks for employees and appropriately reduce their workload to improve productivity.