New research published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine suggests that people who spend more of their working lives in jobs where they have little input in what work to do and how to go about doing it tend to die earlier than employees given more decision-making opportunities.
The study concluded that people who spent their working lives in jobs where they had to make the fewest decisions were 43% more likely to die than people in jobs with a lot of decision-making opportunities. Also, people who spent their working lives in passive jobs, described as those with low demands and low control over what work they do and when, were also 35% more likely to die. In both cases, these findings were significant up to 10 years after the job ended.
The authors of the study encourage both employees and employers to look for ways to enhance the working experience citing that it often does not adversely affect productivity as some might perceive.
This article originally appeared in The Ergonomics Report™ on 2002-06-01.