Research-- the history of the tea lady

(Fee Mozley, 2011)

The role of the tea lady is said to have begun in 1666 by the wife of the East India Company’s housekeeper who made tea for the Director's committee meetings.

A tea lady provides beverages and light snacks during a designated break time - a tea break. The tea lady usually works in an office environment.

Depending upon the facilities available at the workplace, the tea lady might work in a food service area. Or she may come around the office with a trolley or tea cart. The tea cart has everything needed for a tea break - an urn full of either hot water or already prepared tea and a selection of cakes, buns, cookies, or other light treats.

Tea Ladies have been replaced by cafeterias, vending machines, and other means of grabbing a quick and many times unhealthful treat.

In a story put out by BBC News in 2003 - Tea Ladies are Unsung Heroes! A tea lady was nominated to the Queen’s Birthday Honours List. The tea lady who was nominated had served at an economic development agency for 18 years and was nominated for an MBE by the chairman. The Tea Lady received comments such as, “heart and soul of the corporation,” “adored by staff,” “talent and sympathetic ear,” “provider of company news,” “she treats everyone as family.”

In 2006 it was reported that another long time tea lady had been sacked. Without her, the firm was forced to hire a tea consultant at $400/day to teach the employees to properly brew their tea. The employees had to navigate stairwells, use vending machines, etc. The loss of the tea lady resulted in multiple injuries, burns, and some broken bones! 150 staffers were asked how the firm could reduce injuries and they all said, “Bring back the tea lady!”

The Evening Chronicle in 2009 reported an 82-year old tea lady had served for 42 years! She brewed up hot beverages for managers for decades.

ABC News reported on British Businesses calling for Tea Lady last November - Tea Breaks and ‘Duvet Days’ Make the Office a Better Place! The report was about British business leaders wanting to humanize the workplace by bringing back the tea lady and ditching vending machines. The Tea Lady is the highlight of the work day. In fact, some socializing and a friendly office atmosphere should be encouraged as well. They also suggested giving employees three per year of what they called ‘duvet days’ when they just needed a day to stay in bed.

DUTIES OF A TEA LADY

A tea lady is your chairperson of hospitality. She provides tea and light refreshments to managers, employees, and customers during the designated tea break. A tea lady must be friendly, have great communication skills and be able to manage and serve her tea, replenish stock, etc. Above all, she is the business’s heart and soul. She may share company news, lend an ear, or whatever support or encouragement is needed to boost morale.

My review--

After the tutorial with Peter, I made some revisions to my project. For example, in the beginning, when designing the style of the brand, I created a set of visual elements from the way of life in the period of Victorian era; however, through the research of the tea lady, I thought the tea lady could properly transmit the concept—taking a tea brake. Therefore, I started to research a distinctive color palette, graphics, layout, and photography style in the 1950s, which was a golden age of the occupation of the tea lady. 

Reference--

BBC, 2003, Tea lady among unsung heroes [on line] Available at: http:// news.bbc.uk/1/hi/uk/2988340 [accessed 22 October 2012]

Tutorial-- with Peter

(Fuking,2012)

Today I had an opportunity to discuss how my presentation might to go with Peter. It was an exciting discussion because he gave me a lot of interesting advises. For example, at the beginning, I want to use Victorian style to package the brand, but he thought that if I want to create a tea brand for people who are working in the UK, especially in the office, I should research the tea lady because the occupation of the tea lady plays a vital role for people who worked in the office in 1950s so I could use the imagery of tea lady as a symbol of the tea brand. 

In addition, as I research what time is the most popular time for employees to drink a cup of tea in a day, I found British had previously been used to putting the kettle on every time. For instance, someone got out of bed, arrived at work, had a conversation, returned from work of put their feet up, therefore not to mentions the obligatory pause in whatever one was doing at 4 o'clock. As a result, Peter suggested that maybe my brand could be called Eleven Four. Hence, I might alter a little bit of my project after the tutorial. 

Research-- Why coffee breaks are good for productivity?

(Fuling,2013)

We may live in the age of smart phones and Twitter, but ancient signalling systems used by the great apes - and even the birds and the bees - are alive and well in 21st century workplaces. Now, this subtle layer of nonverbal communication can not only be measured, it can be harnessed to enhance productivity, according to new research.

By mapping how employees interact throughout their workday, scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Laboratory have found that something as simple as co-ordinating when employees take their breaks can boost their output. "There are a lot of things we take for granted when we work. We think that having lunch or coffee with friends are luxuries, and not really important for the way we work. But in multiple studies we saw that social interaction was one of the main things that predicts productivity," noted Benjamin Waber, an MIT doctoral student. "The more people talk to other people, the more productive they are."

The research team, led by Professor Alex (Sandy) Pentland, uncovered the impact of nonverbal signalling by asking employees in large workplaces to wear sociometric badges - wearable computers that look like a cross between an ID tag and a deck of cards. Worn around the neck, the badges have sensors that track people's patterns of movement around the office, whether and when they're talking to colleagues, and how engaged they are during the discussion.

"They can tell you who is talking to whom. A microphone records pitch, intonation, and volume," said Mr. Waber. The masses of data are aggregated to detect overarching patterns; they're not analyzed for content ("You can't reconstruct what people are saying," he says). Nor does the company get any person's data.

The researchers knew that social cohesion is linked to job satisfaction and performance, having previously used sociometric badges to track interactions among people working in banks, hospitals, and IT operations. They found that increasing social cohesion by one standard deviation among information technology workers was associated with a 10-per-cent increase in their productivity. But in this new study of 3,000 call centre employees, they demonstrate that face-to-face interaction can actually boost production.

"Call centres are specifically managed to reduce face-to-face interaction between people," Mr. Waber noted. "It's an assembly-line attitude. The work was structured so that no one had a break at the same time," adding to an already stressful work environment, he explained. Mr. Waber hypothesized that allowing cohesive relationships to form among colleagues during overlapping coffee breaks could prevent burnout and improve productivity.

In the first phase of the study, teams of 20 employees wore the badges for six weeks, and the scientists simply measured what happened during their 15-minute breaks. In the second phase, the employees were divided into two groups: those who had the customary staggered breaks, and those who were allowed to take breaks with their colleagues. For three months, the badges tracked the workers' nonverbal communication patterns.

"We found this huge change in how cohesive they were. There was this new opportunity for interaction, and it changed their mindset for the whole day," Mr. Waber said of those who were able to take breaks with their colleagues. "They were less stressed. We saw this dramatic change in their behaviour even though we're only talking about changing 15 minutes of their day."

The badges also tracked interesting clues from the coffee breaks, periods usually seen as lost time by managers. For example, women most often talked to other women, while men talked to men and women in equal measure, Mr. Waber said. And workers with the most experience were neither more efficient at their jobs, nor more socially integrated. But those who were part of a dense social group (meaning that the people they talked to also talked a lot to each other) were the most productive.

"Perhaps a friend said, 'This is how I dealt with this problem or how I pitched this new product,'" Mr. Waber suggested. "At work, the things that matter are these social interactions. Very good managers deeply embedded in a company intuitively understand this. Now we can measure it in completely new ways."

My review--

In terms of the article, the research of that the people they talked to also talk a lot to each other were the most productive in the company inspired me to think about if the tea brand encourage people have more social interaction, not only workers but also the tea company will get the benefits. For example,according to the article, when people doing this kinds of activity,  they could become more creativity and productivity, similarly, the tea company can improve the numbers of sales. Therefore, my project might use the idea to develop the concept of the tea brand.

Reference 

SUSAN, P., 2012, Why coffee breaks are good for productivity [online] The Globe and Mail. Available at:http://m.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/management/why-coffee-breaks-are-good-for-productivity/article622874/?service=mobile [ Accessed 10 December]

Sketching

Below are a few of sketches, which was inspired by 50s posters that I collected, I created in my sketch book.

(Fuling, 2012)

The first sketch described the duty of the tea lady in the office. Though research of tea ladies, I found " tea ladies are employed in various work and they premises to ensure workers are adequately supplied with refreshments during their break times." but before I searched it, I didn't know what duty tea ladies have to do. Hence, I believe most of young people who are working in the office might not know the story behind the occupation so maybe I could introduce the story or the background of the tea lady to them by my illustrations.

(Fuling, 2012)

This sketch is taking about the feeling that after enjoy the tea break made by tea ladies, they were in an light-hearted mood just like to go surfing. 

( Fuling, 2013)

This sketch was influenced by George Him. When I saw his work, I thought maybe I could create some figures for my brand.

(Fuling, 2012)

The final sketch described the importance of the tea ladies.