The church and small groups can learn something from a Swedish tradition called Fika. Pronounced “fee-kah,” the Swedish culture of breaking for coffee involves a deliberate pause to provide space and time for people to connect.

In Sweden, work life has long revolved around fika, a once- or twice-a-day ritual in which colleagues put away phones, laptops, and any shoptalk to commune over coffee, pastries, or other snacks.

Swedish employees and their managers say the cultural tradition helps drive employee well-being, productivity, and innovation by clearing the mind and fostering togetherness.

Many Swedish companies build a mandatory fika into the workday, while the Embassy of Sweden in Washington holds one for staff weekly. IKEA extols the virtues of fika: “When we disconnect for a short period, our productivity increases significantly.”

“Fika is where we talk life, we talk everything but work itself,” said Micael Dahlen, professor at the Stockholm School of Economics. The ritual helps drive “trivsel,” he says, a term that means a combination of workplace enjoyment and thriving. The concept is so fundamental to Swedish workplaces that many companies in Sweden have trivsel committees.