HEALTHY HABITS FOR EMPLOYEES

Adopting healthy habits at work can help employees keep their weight in check

A new study has suggested that some simple changes to promote healthy habits at work can help to prevent employees from gaining weight.

However, these types of environmental interventions aren't likely to lead to weight loss even when combined with an individual weight-management programme, according to the study by researchers at University of Georgia and Emory University.
The researchers report on the impact of environmental interventions at several Dow Chemical Company worksites. They found that simple, low-cost interventions -- for example, encouraging workers to take the stairs and making healthy options available in vending machines -- helped to avoid employee weight gain.
They study also evaluated the effects of a voluntary, low-intensity individual weight-management programme. The programme was popular, with about 60 per cent of eligible workers participating.
"However, employees who participated in the individually focused intervention were no more successful at losing weight than those who were only exposed to the environmental interventions," said researchers.

"Low-cost environmental interventions provide an opportunity for worksites to encourage weight maintenance and control in the general employee population," concluded researchers conclude.
The study has been published in the March Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

Source: ANI
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FLEXIBLE WORKPLACE

Flexible workplace schedule lessens work-family conflict

A workplace environment that allows employees to change when and where they work, based on their individual needs and job responsibilities, positively affects the work-family interface, according to a new research from the University of Minnesota.

U of M sociology professors Erin Kelly and Phyllis Moen base their findings on data from surveys of more than 600 employees and company records from Minnesota-based Best Buy before and after the implementation of a so-called "Results Only Work Environment" (ROWE) workplace initiative.
ROWE redirected the focus of employees and managers towards measurable results and away from a set work schedule and location. Employees could routinely change when and where they worked without seeking permission from a manager or even notifying one. Moen and Kelly examined whether the initiative affects work-family conflict, whether schedule control plays a role in these effects, and whether work demands (including long hours) moderate the initiative's effects on work-family outcomes.
"The study points to the importance of schedule control for understanding job quality and for management policies and practices," said Moen.
"With these changes in the workplace, employees gained control over the time and timing of their work in ways that benefitted them and, by extension, their families and communities," said Kelly.

"It is feasible to broaden access to schedule control and thereby relieve work-family conflicts and improve work-family fit for more workers," added Moen.
The research also demonstrates positive impact of the ROWE initiative for the company. The researchers found that ROWE reduced turnover by 45 pc -- after controlling for multiple factors like job level, organisational tenure, job satisfaction, income adequacy, job security, and other turnover intentions.
"By showing that a policy initiative like ROWE can reduce turnover, this research moves the "opting out" argument -- whether one chooses family over work -- from a private issue to an issue of how employers can change the workplace to better meet the needs of employees," added Moen.
The research has been published in American Sociological Review study.
Source: ANI
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Designer clothes can help you grab better jobs!
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CLOTHES CAN HELP TO BETTER JOB ...?????????

Designer clothes can help you grab better jobs!

A study has suggested that though designer clothes may leave your wallet empty, they are a sound investment.

It found that wearing well-known brand labels makes you appear wealthier, more worthy of respect and can even help you bag a better job, reports the Daily Mail.
The study, at Tilburg University, in the Netherlands, involved four experiments.
The researchers tested reactions to well-known brands when judging status and wealth, responding to an invitation to take part in a survey, assessing a potential employee and being asked to give to charity.

In one test, women who wore a well-known brand on their polo shirt were given almost twice as much money when they solicited for charity than when they wore non-designer outfits.
In another, wearing branded clothes not only increased a man's chances of being judged suitable for a job, but even increased the salary those surveyed would offer him by 9 per cent.
Researchers Rob Nelissen and Marijn Meijers said humans are failing to see beyond the surface and that we are being sucked in by advertising for designer brands.
Source: ANI
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11 HOURS WORK .... GET FREE HEART ATTACK???????

Working 11 hours or more can up heart attack risk

People who spend more than 11 hours a day at work increase their chances of having a heart attack by 67 per cent, a study has found.

A team from University College London looked at more than 7,000 civil servants over a period of 11 years and established how many hours they worked on an average a day.
They also collected information, including the condition of their heart, from medical records and health checks. Over the period, 192 had suffered a heart attack, reports the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.
The study found that those who worked more than 11 hours a day were 67 per cent more likely to have a heart attack than those who had a 'nine to five' job, according to the Daily Mail.
Said Mika Kivimäki, who led the study: "We have shown that working long days is associated with a remarkable increase in the risk of heart disease."

The researchers say their findings could potentially prevent thousands of heart attacks a year as they would help physicians get a better idea of how likely a patient was to have one.
Patients already at high risk - by being obese or smoking, for example - could be encouraged to cut down on their working hours.
Around 2.6 million in Britain alone have heart disease, in which the organ's blood supply is blocked by the build-up of fatty deposits in the coronary arteries. It claims 101,000 lives every year in the country.
Source: IANS
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PREMATURE DEATH

Losing a job could result in premature death

People without jobs face a 63 per cent risk of dying prematurely, according to surveys covering 20 million people in 15 countries over the last 40 years.

A surprise finding was that the link between unemployment and a higher death risk remained the same in all the countries covered by the study, inspite of better healthcare systems.
"Until now, one of the big questions has been about whether pre-existing health conditions, such as diabetes or heart problems, smoking, drinking or drug use, lead to both unemployment and a greater risk of death," said Eran Shor, who led the study.
"This probably has to do with unemployment causing stress and negatively affecting one's socio-economic status, which in turn leads to poorer health and higher mortality rates," said Shor, professor in sociology at McGill University.
The research also showed that unemployment increases men's mortality risk more than it does women's mortality risk (78 per cent vs 37 per cent).

The risk of death is particularly high for those who are under the age of 50, according to a McGill statement.
"We suspect that even today, not having a job is more stressful for men than for women," Shor said.
"When a man loses his job, it still often means that the family will become poorer and suffer in various ways, which in turn can have a huge impact on a man's health by leading to both increased smoking, drinking or eating," he said.
Source: IANS
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PAYS TO BE HONEST AT YOUR JOB

It pays to be honest at your job

A new study has revealed for the first time that the more honest and humble you are, the better is your job performance.

"This study shows that those who possess the combination of honesty and humility have better job performance," said lead author Wade Rowatt, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor University
"In fact, we found that humility and honesty not only correspond with job performance, but also predicted job performance above and beyond any of the other five personality traits like agreeableness and conscientiousness," he added.
Rowatt and his colleagues surveyed 269 employees in 25 different companies across 20 states in the United States who provide health care for challenging clients.
Supervisors of the employees in the study then rated the job performance of each employee on 35 different job skills and described the kind of customer with whom the employee worked.

The researchers found that those who self-reported more honesty and humility were scored significantly higher by their supervisors for their job performance.
They defined honesty and humility as those who exhibit high levels of fairness, greed-avoidance, sincerity and modesty.
"Honest and humble people could be a good fit for occupations and organisations that require special attention and care for products or clients," said study co-author Megan Johnson.
"Narcissists, on the other hand, who generally lack humility and are exploitative and selfish, would probably be better at jobs that require self-promotion," he added.
The study currently appears online in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.
Source: ANI
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WOMEN BETTER THEN MEN??????

Women more competitive than men, says new study

Women may be the fairer sex but they are more cunning and competitive than men when the going gets tough.

Instead of physical violence women rely more on subtle forms of aggression, such as excluding someone from a group if they think they are a threat, reports express.co.uk.
Psychologist Joyce Benenson of Harvard University asked volunteers to play a game against two hypothetical partners. Volunteers had the option of playing alone or joining forces with an opponent.
The results revealed that when volunteers played the game with no threat of social exclusion there was no difference between men and women.
When the exclusion factor was used, however, women chose to join forces with an opponent and exclude the third player more often than the male volunteers.
Benenson said: "The social worlds of men and women differ in that females have to worry about alienating others, whereas males worry about getting beaten up. As their primary competitive strategy, females may attempt to form an exclusionary alliance, whereas males may try to directly dominate an opponent."
Source: ANI
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Sick Leaves

Stress and conflicts at work can trigger taking sick leave

A study has found that sick leaves, which are usually taken due to illness, are now being taken even for conflicts and stress at work.

According to UK government statistics, over 8 million working days per year are lost due to illness and about a third of these are due to minor ailments such as coughs, colds, sickness and diarrhoea.
A Swedish study interviewed more than 400 individuals, who worked at six different workplaces, including health-care workers, office staff and people in the manufacturing industry, within a few days of them taking sick leave.
"When we compared aspects at work during the days just before the participants reported sick to other workdays, we found that problems in relationships with colleagues and superiors were more frequent in the days just before sick leave than on other days," sociologist Hanna Hultin from the Karolinska Institutet explained.
"We also found that individuals with a minor ailment were more likely to report sick when they expected that the following workday would be particularly stressful," she stated.

Stress and conflicts at work can trigger taking sick leave

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So it seems that the work environment does not only affect our health, but also our behaviour when ill.
Understanding stress in the workplace plays an important part in determining why sick-leave rates differ between individuals in ways that do not mirror differences in health.
The findings have been published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Public Health
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