Flexible Schedules Makes Workers Healthier & Happier
By: Stephanie Castillo
Updated: December 15, 2011
Companies that
focus on results rather than face time in the office may end up with
healthier employees, a new study shows.
When management is
more flexible about how and when a job gets done, workers get more sleep
and exercise, have the time to make doctors' appointments and are less
likely to come to work sick, according to the study,
which was published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.
By putting the focus
on the end product - whether that is a report or customer satisfaction -
the company allows people to make their own schedules, explained the
study's lead author Phyllis Moen, a professor of sociology
and McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair at the University of Minnesota.
That lowers stress and allows people to better take care of their
health, she added.
Moen and her
colleagues stumbled on a unique opportunity when they learned that
electronics retailer Best Buy was about to switch to a new work
structure at its corporate headquarters. And because the company was
going
to make the switch one department at a time, the researchers would be
able to compare workers from the same company - some working under the
old structure and some under the new. It was, Moen said, a "natural
experiment."
The new structure was
something called ROWE, or Results Only Work Environment.
To see what impact
ROWE would have on employee health, Moen and her colleagues asked
employees from a department that was about to switch over to ROWE to
fill out a series of questionnaires that looked at everything
from hours of sleep to whether employees went to the doctor when sick.
The researchers also
asked another group of employees - from a department that wasn't yet
slated to change - to fill out the same questionnaires.
Six months later, Moen
and her colleagues came back and questioned both groups again.
They found that
employees from the department that had switched to ROWE were:
--Getting an hour more
sleep each night compared to six months earlier.
--Finding more time to
exercise and go to the doctor when they were sick.
--Far less likely to
show up at work and get others sick when they came down with a cold or
flu.
(Copyright: MSNBC) read more
(Copyright: MSNBC) read more
