A lack of flexibility in high-stress jobs may literally be a matter of life and death, experts warn.
A new study shows that people with little control over their workflow are less healthy and even die at a younger age than those with more flexibility and discretion in their jobs who are able to set their own goals as part of their employment.
Researchers used a longitudinal sample of 2,363 Wisconsin residents in their 60s over a seven-year period and found that for individuals in low-control jobs, high job demands are associated with a 15.4 percent increase in the likelihood of death, compared to low job demands.
For those in high-control jobs, high job demands are associated with a 34 percent decrease in the likelihood of death compared to low job demands.
“We explored job demands, or the amount of work, time pressure, and concentration demands of a job, and job control, or the amount of discretion one has over making decisions at work, as joint predictors of death,” said Erik Gonzalez-Mulé, assistant professor of organizational behavior and human resources at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University.
“These findings suggest that stressful jobs have clear negative consequences for employee health when paired with low freedom in decision-making, while stressful jobs can actually be beneficial to employee health if also paired with freedom in decision-making.”
Don’t Lower Expectations
Studies exploring work factors associated with death are largely absent from the organizational psychology and management literatures. The authors of the new study in Personnel Psychology believe theirs is the first study in the management and applied psychology fields to examine the relationship between job characteristics and mortality.
The results don’t suggest that employers necessarily need to cut back on what is expected from employees, Gonzalez-Mulé says. Rather, they demonstrate the value in restructuring some jobs to provide employees with more say in how the work gets done.
