How often/many breaks do you take if you have a desk based job?

[Cluelessness]

Started new role which is sat in front of a computer all day. Entitled to a 30 min break which people seem to take around lunch time. Would I be unreasonable to take a 10 min break every hour or so? I’m finding it so boring and not at all healthy.
What is considered as ok?

Not unreasonable. Sitting at a desk is bad for your health. HSE advice:
There is no legal guidance about how long and how often breaks should be for DSE work. It depends on the kind of work you are doing. Take short breaks often, rather than longer ones less often. For example 5 to 10 minutes every hour is better than 20 minutes every 2 hours. Ideally, users should be able to choose when to take breaks.
https://www.hse.gov.uk/msd/dse/work-routine.htm#:~:text=Take%20short%20breaks%20often%2C%20rather,meetings%20or%20making%20phone%20calls.

Employers have a legal obligation to your health and safety, over and above concerns about 10 mins an hour being “too many breaks”.

You’re not legally entitled to anything but 5-10 mins a hour is reasonable. Weird that 75% on here think you’re unreasonable to protect your spine, joints and general health from the proven harmful effects of long term computer work.

My previous CEO was very firm about taking breaks.

Our worst performer by a country mile was the man who had sixty tabs open and worked 8-8.

When I was in charge of Opps, we focused on output and actively encouraged people to move around. We had meetings in the park quite often too - movement literally changes your brainwaves positively.

It's totally counter productive to sit still all day. That's not what we evolved to do.

Seriously, in an 8 hour day that's 1 hour 20 mins extra per day, 6 hours 40 mins per week!!!!

You wouldn't last long in our place.

2 x 10 min breaks and 30 min lunch. Sure you know we the t&c's before you started and what you would be doing.

Everyone is complaining they can't get through to call centres and then in the same breath saying we should all take 5-10 mins an hour break!
They would need to employ even more staff to cover that
999 calls queue already without adding the pressure of giving people breaks every hour

Give over its 35-50 mins a day. Maths not your strong point? 5-10mins at 10am, 11am, 2, 3, 4pm. Not unreasonable at all, why should I risk my health for a job? Just because some people accept less? We used to accept children working in mills too doesn’t make it ok.

Reading some of these replies makes me understand why society is shit. Yes, these places should absolutely be hiring more people if it means protecting the health of their staff. Or better still, investigate ineffective processes and put in place improvements.

It is not a 999 call centres operatives responsibility to take the hit for the uneducated, unlistening public who abuse the lines, or the likely ineffective management and budget.

I don't know what type of office work you do but if there are calls where you don't need to be looking at a screen or presenting to the group you can listen in to calls while walking - my headset can Bluetooth to my phone so if i dial in from my phone I can take the call while out on a walk

A 10 minute break every hour is unreasonable - as others have said, that's over an hour per day of paid time where you're not working.

That being said, I understand your situation as sitting and staring at a screen all day isn't great. It might not be applicable to your role but in my role, there are other tasks such as filing, retrieving/storing files, putting documents back and retrieving other documents from other rooms. I usually save these tasks up and then allocate 10-15 minutes every couple of hours to do them which ties in nicely with around the time I need to stretch my legs and have a walk about. This means I'm not taking "breaks" from work but I'm taking a break from sitting down at my desk to do other tasks which still need doing, I just strategically time them for when I could do with a walkabout. It really depends on your job though as I know a lot of jobs don't require you moving from your desk to do other things.

Combining this with the odd trip to the loo and then my usual lunch break, I find there's enough time away from my desk to keep me happy. I wouldn't take an actual break other than the ones I'd accepted when I took on the job role though, which in my case is an hour at lunch.

It's not just that
They're not going to pay for an extra hours break per shift
I can't afford to lose an hours pay a day so I'll keep just having my breaks every 2-3hrs

My work will let us split our 2 x 15 into 3 x 10 but we can't all do it on the same day. 10 mins isn't usually enough TBH to get a drink, toilet, and eat something and get back

A 10 minute break every hour is unreasonable - as others have said, that's over an hour per day of paid time where you're not working.

As a director, I never saw staff time that way.

They were expected to be on site for their hours, and to spend their time there to the profit of the company - including spending time away from their desks to refresh.

Relaxed and connected staff produced better results.

There's an assumption that not being at your desk = not working.

That isn't necessarily the case. You could be talking to a colleague or just mulling something over while taking a turn around the office.

In my desk-based job, we have an activity tracker with a target of working for 85% of our day - they encourage us to take a 7 minute break each hour, and we get an hour's lunch. Didn't appreciate how lucky I was til this thread!

Officially, 36 minute lunch break. However, morning tea break around 10, then rinse and repeat once or twice in the PM.

I think that's the thing and why they don't do it in call centres
Away from your desk = not working so it would be unpaid time

I couldn't tell you the number of times someone came back from the loo saying, "I've had an idea...".

To be honest, my staff would often come in in the morning with an idea they had after work. Their brains kept churning on outside of working hours, so I was never going to make a fuss about a few minutes here and there during the day.

Indeed. Most of my ideas (work or otherwise) come to me when my mind isn't on other things - in the shower, washing up, out for a run ie. the most inconvenient times!

I don't think the OP works in a call centre though. Not as a call handler, anyway.

I wfh and have a walking treadmill, I haven't used it today, but I use it probably two days a week for about four hours a time.

I have ADHD and I find it really distracting to break from my desk for too long, hard to get back to where I was and what I was doing, so I like the treadmill.

Even with that, I tend to do something for 25 mins, then maybe switch a task, so it's mentally less demanding - you could also try that OP, I.e. switching or modifying the task to make it less boring.