No matter what your boss thinks, standing around the water cooler isn’t a waste of time. As well as the benefits to your health there are also some good business advantages to be gained. Here are three reasons to spend more time at the water cooler.

1. Avoiding dehydration

This summer has been hot, hot, hot! That means there is more reason than ever to make sure that you are drinking enough water. In fact, while the temperatures are so high, you’ll probably want to be drinking about 3 L a day and the office water cooler is a great place to meet your daily water requirements while you work. Drinking water will actually help to make you more productive as you will avoid the worst effects of dehydration. If you’ve been sitting at your desk feeling a little headachy and with a dry mouth then that’s a sign that you need to drink more water. Getting away from your desk won’t take more than a couple of minutes and could make a big difference to the amount and quality of work you are able to do for the rest of the day.

2. Intra-company networking

There’s no better way to find out what’s really going on in a company than around the water cooler. In between the chat about weekends, vacations and lunch plans, there is often a lot of useful information about what people are working on and who they are talking to. People are more relaxed around the water cooler so along with the latest sports or fashion discussion you might also pick up some tips that will help you with what you are working on. It’s also a good way to get to know other people who work on the same floor as you but whom you might not otherwise get the chance to speak to. This cements relationships within the company which helps with doing good business.

3. A mental break

It is difficult to sit at your desk from 9 to 5 without experiencing some fatigue. Getting up to walk to the water cooler gets a little blood flowing around your body and gives your brain and eyes a break from what they were working on. While concentrating on getting your water without spilling it your subconscious will probably solve the issue you were working on — or at the very least provide some new thoughts on how to tackle it. That’s what it’s there for and a water cooler break lets your subconscious do its job.

Looking after your health by avoiding dehydration, networking with others in your company and taking a mental break to refresh your ideas are all great reasons to hang around the water cooler at work. And if you’re healthy and more productive, your boss isn’t going to complain, is he?

Note: This is another guest post by Sharon Hurley Hall. Sharon drinks at least 8 glasses of water a day! When she’s not drinking water, she writes articles for Eden Springs. Eden is the No 1. water cooler supplier in the UK, as well as the UK’s first provider of certified carbon neutral water.