Relaxing & Energizing

Organisations achieve results in the same way as professional athletes: They spend years completely dedicated to improvement in order to excel at certain moments. This whitepaper focuses on practical ways that organisations and their employees can use insights gleaned from professional sports in order to improve work performance and give employees time for achieving goals in their private lives.

The more stressful an experience or situation is, the more difficult it becomes to not think about it, relax, or do something else. We could actually start worrying about it more. Leiden professor Brosschot (2007) and his research group showed that worrying keeps the stress physiology going in our body, and this was later confirmed by other research groups (Ottavaiani et al., 2015).

In order to perform work, people have to make an effort. Although work can give a person satisfaction, from a physiological point of view work effort is inevitably accompanied by a certain loss of energy. Therefore, after exerting yourself for some time at work, you occasionally feel mentally or physically fatigued. This fatigue decreases when you take a break, slow down the pace, or do something completely different.

You have a busy job, a full agenda and a list of all kinds of tasks and things that definitely need to be done. How do you ensure that you start your day as energetic as possible, that you remain energetic and that you still feel like doing something after work? We have listed some useful tips for you, both for employees and employers. If you follow these tips, we guarantee that from now on every day will be a productive day!

According to the national government (2021), a maximum of 12 hours per shift and a maximum of 60 hours per week may be worked. Separate rules apply for young people up to the age of 18 and for pregnant women and women who have recently given birth. The specific collective labor agreement for employees may also contain deviating rules.