With stress levels among UK workers at record highs, neuroscience research points to an unexpectedly simple intervention that HR teams have largely overlooked.
Workplace burnout has become one of the more pressing challenges facing HR departments, and the scale of the problem is difficult to ignore. Data from the Burnout Report 2025 found that 91 percent of UK adults experienced high or extreme levels of stress in the past year — a figure that suggests conventional wellbeing initiatives are not keeping pace with the problem.
Against that backdrop, Jessie Brooks, Product Manager at Davincified, is making a case for an intervention so simple it is easy to dismiss: encouraging employees to doodle.
“While it might seem counterintuitive to encourage employees to pick up a pen and start drawing during work hours, the science behind doodling is compelling,” Brooks said. “You’re giving the brain permission to wander and make connections in ways that structured work simply doesn’t allow.”
What Neuroscience Says
The instinct to treat doodling as a sign of disengagement turns out to be difficult to reconcile with the available evidence. Research conducted at Drexel University using brain imaging found that artistic activities including free-form doodling activate neural reward circuits associated with improved mood and stronger problem-solving capacity. Among the various forms of artistic expression studied, unstructured doodling produced the most pronounced cognitive benefits.
The mechanism, Brooks suggests, lies in the absence of evaluative pressure. When there is no expectation of producing something correct or impressive, the brain operates differently — more associatively, less defensively. “Original ideas can flow unfiltered,” she said. “There’s no pressure to produce something ‘good,’ which paradoxically makes it easier to enter those flow states where real innovation happens.”
Three Performance Benefits With Direct Workplace Relevance
Brooks identifies three areas where the cognitive effects of doodling translate into measurable differences in how people work.
Sustained attention is the first. Doodling during a long meeting or a complex briefing keeps the mind actively engaged at a low level, preventing the passive drift that causes people to miss information. The physical act of drawing occupies just enough cognitive bandwidth to maintain alertness without competing with comprehension.
Memory retention is the second. Studies indicate that people who doodle while listening to information recall significantly more of it than those who sit passively. The act of drawing appears to reinforce memory encoding through the creation of additional neural connections around the material being heard.
Creative thinking is the third. Analytical work and doodling engage different neural regions, and activating both simultaneously encourages the kind of cross-domain associations that tend to generate novel solutions. “The traditional workplace has often prioritised focus and consistency, which can actually stifle broader-mindedness,” Brooks noted.
Companies Already Testing the Approach
A small but growing number of organisations have moved beyond theory and built doodling into their working culture. Mondelez introduced whiteboard tables to its meeting spaces specifically to encourage spontaneous sketching, and credits the initiative with producing solutions that more conventional meeting formats had not surfaced. Australian media firm Ajentis went further, applying whiteboard paint to its walls and embedding structured collaborative drawing sessions into its regular schedule.
Brooks frames both examples as evidence that creative latitude and operational rigour are not in conflict. “Doodling offers a liberating release that complements traditional work methods rather than replacing them,” she said.
A Low-Barrier Starting Point for HR Teams
For organisations that want to explore the approach without significant investment or disruption, Brooks suggests starting with the basics: making notepads and pens a standard feature of meeting rooms, and treating doodling during discussions as acceptable rather than discouraged.
From there, periodic unstructured sessions — she suggests an hour of open visual thinking, free from any expectation of output — give employees a more deliberate opportunity to access the cognitive benefits. Monthly challenges that invite staff to sketch responses to a workplace problem add a light structure without reintroducing the evaluative pressure that undermines the exercise.
“When employees feel safe to explore ideas visually without fear of criticism, you’re reducing stress while also sowing the seeds of a more innovative and vibrant workplace culture,” Brooks said.
The investment required is minimal. The notepads already exist. The meetings are already happening. The question, Brooks implies, is simply whether organisations are willing to change what they permit within them.