More flexibility at work equals better health, new study confirms

Jessica Stillman — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 18:02:12 +0000

The flexible future of work, which trades in the office-based nine-to-five for increased flexibility in where, when and how work gets done, might seem far off to those trapped in cubicle-obsessed, clock-watching, traditional organizations. But as the idea gains traction, it’s also gaining scientific support, with more and more studies proving the value of flexibility. Hopefully, this mainstream validation will eventually sway even the most old-school managers.

As we’ve previously reported, a rigorous study out of Stanford recently supported claims that remote work increases productivity. Now another study led by University of Minnesota sociology professor Phyllis Moen is doing the same for results-only work environments (known as ROWE) with a careful examination of Best Buy’s experiment in flexibility.

The results appear in this month’s Journal of Health and Social Behavior and are also highlighted in The Atlantic’s “Study of the Day” section. To obtain them, Moen and her colleagues compared the well-being and health-promoting behavior of 659 employees at Best Buy’s headquarters before and after ROWE was implemented there in 2006. Half of the employees participated in the program; half did not. What were the results? The researchers summed it up succinctly:

Participating in the ROWE initiative directly increases employees’ health-related behaviors of sleep and exercise, as well as the likelihood that employees will not go to the workplace when sick and will see a doctor when sick.

Those with flexibility got a half hour more sleep every night, experienced less work-family conflict and were at lower risk for some of the greatest hits of poor health: “unhealthy eating habits, obesity, elevated cholesterol levels, and hypertension.”

The takeaway for managers is simple and was neatly summed up by Moen in the news release announcing the findings: “Emphasizing actual results can create a work environment that fosters healthy behavior and well-being.” You can download the complete study by clicking here.

The results seem to clearly indicate that, compared to a traditionally structured corporate job, ROWE promotes health and happiness (and probably, by extension, productivity). But it should also be noted that farther down the scale of independence and flexibility, when work is entirely remote and professionals are fully responsible for their own schedules, there is also some evidence that freedom can increase stress and sleeplessness for a significant minority of workers. Care needs to be taken as flexibility increases, so workers get the support they need to feel in control of the demands on their schedules, according to another recent analysis from an academic at the University of Sheffield.

Do rigid schedules contribute to ill health in your experience?

Image courtesy of Flickr user Ed Yourdon.

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Hulu Bad For the Net, Video Still Not Clogging It

Stacey Higginbotham — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:19:55 +0000

Hulu is a problem. So argues a paper by University of Minnesota Professor Dr. Andrew Odlyzko, who says that video isn’t actually clogging the Net right now, but that streaming video content is such an inefficient way of getting video from one place to another that sites should find better options, such as faster-than-real-time streaming and buffering. The goal of the paper is to counter carrier assurances that they will protect video even without any mandated Network Neutrality. Odlyzko argues that such assurances might lead to special video pathways, but that’s not the Internet the market wants and needs.

Aside from Odlyzko’s attack on streaming, which he says comprises 9.6 percent of total web traffic during evening hours and has grown 169 percent year over year, the largest part of the paper is devoted to data that supports his conclusions that content, such as Internet radio and video, is worth less than connectivity such as voice or Twitter. People don’t pay for content, they pay for connectivity, says Odlyzko.

For all the hoopla about Hollywood, all the movie theater ticket sales and all the DVD
sales in the U.S. for a full year do not come amount [sic] to even one month of the revenuesof the telecom industry. And those telecom revenues are still over 70% based on voice,
deﬁnitely a connectivity service. In wireless, there is very rapid growth in data service
revenues, but most of those revenues are from texting, another connectivity service (and
one that the industry did not design, but stumbled into).

The report makes for good reading for those thinking about the value of broadband connections (from a revenue perspective a text message generates $1,000 per MB for a carrier while a wireless voice call generates $1 per MB and broadband Internet generates 1 cent per MB) and next-generation services. But if people will pay for connectivity, why can’t Twitter find a business model?

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More flexibility at work equals better health, new study confirms

Hulu Bad For the Net, Video Still Not Clogging It