How office coffee breaks make staff work harder

Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that that caffeine helped improve workers' memory and concentration as well as reducing the number of mistakes they made. For those on long overnight shifts.

It has a similar effect to taking a “power nap”, the findings, published in the Cochrane Library journal, suggest. The researchers also suggested that drinking coffee could help reduce accidents at work, traffic crashes involving people at the end of long shifts and even medical errors by doctors on call for long periods of time.

The team reviewed the findings of 13 separate studies from around the world involving shift workers, mostly in their 20s, in simulated working conditions. Volunteers had been asked to perform tasks to test their memory, concentration, use of words and reasoning while two of the trials measured how prone they were to making simple errors.

Some were given caffeine while others were given a placebo to compare the effects.

The tests were then repeated when the volunteers were exposed to other factors such as bright lights or allowed to take a nap.

In memory, reasoning and concentration tests, those who had been given caffeine all scored moderately better than those given a placebo.

The effect could be seen irrespective of whether they drank a cup of coffee, an energy drink, took a caffeine pill or ate food with a high caffeine content.

Although there was little difference between the results of those given a cup of coffee compared with those allowed to take a nap overall, one study showed that those given caffeine made fewer errors.

Katharine Ker of the London School of Tropical Medicine in London, the lead researcher, said: “The results of the trials suggest that compared to no intervention, caffeine can reduce the number of errors and improve cognitive performance in shift workers. “It seems reasonable to assume that reduced errors are associated with fewer injuries, although we cannot quantify such a reduction.” The team called for more research to measure the effects of caffeine on older people.