The following article comes from the U.S. News ebook, How to Live to 100, which is now available for purchase.
Americans look to work for money, accomplishment, and personal validation. Beyond these foundational goals, workplace experts note, health and well-being are shaped by the same things that affect people in their other relationships—how they are treated, the strength and support of work-based social networks, and their ability to achieve a work-family balance that supports the rest of their lives.
[See the Top 10 U.S. Cities for Well-Being.]
"Employment is good for your health," says Wake Forest University sociologist Robin Simon. "Work gives people a source of social interaction as well as [makes] a financial contribution" to their lives, she says. The added stresses and documented health effects of job losses during the past several years only prove how important work is to our well-being.
While the recession has made many workplaces stressful environments, it hasn't changed the potential benefits that people derive from supportive management and work policies. It has, at least in the short run, intensified a work culture that has already made the United States one of the least health-friendly nations in terms of working hours and lack of policies that support healthy family life.
"Work is organized in such a way that it makes it a constant challenge to maintain social and family ties," says Lisa Berkman, a Harvard professor who has extensively studied well-being and health. "We do almost nothing in terms of how our work is organized to help families exist. Instead of facilitating that, we in the United States challenge that all the time."
Berkman is now involved in a family-friendly pilot program with a company that provides long-term care services. Many of its employees are women. "Managers who were open and flexible to their employees' work and family needs had employees who had lower blood pressures" and less stress, she says. "Nurses are always on the border of being sleep-deprived, but the nurses in this program who had supportive managers slept an average of a half-hour longer" each day.
Countless studies going back decades have documented the health benefits employees get from so-called enlightened management policies. The difference today, Berkman says, is the growing body of persuasive evidence that companies can improve employee productivity, reduce staff turnover, and make more money by supporting employee well-being. Further, many companies have been surprised over the years to learn that they can trust employees to help manage their own work-life balance needs. Not only can people be trusted, but they perform better and enjoy their jobs more when they know they are trusted.
Teresa Amabile is co-author of The Progress Principle and a professor and director of research at the Harvard Business School. She has been studying workplace behavior and attitudes through detailed personal diaries kept by people working in different companies, industries, and even nations.
The research has produced shared components of a successful work experience that can be useful to all employees and their managers, Amabile says. "People seem to experience higher levels of well-being at work when they are intrinsically motivated," she says. They have a passion for what they do, and the job challenges them at the very top of their skill level.
In psychological terms, Amabile explains, a person's "inner work life" has requirements that need to be met for them to derive the most healthful benefits from their work. These include emotions, motivations, and impressions that are tied to all aspects of their employment, and it's noteworthy that each requirement has positive and negative components.
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joel of AL 5:34AM October 10, 2012
Cal Stevens of GA 4:46PM June 04, 2012