Latest news with #HumanBehaviour
Otago Daily Times
01-08-2025
- Health
- Otago Daily Times
Four-day work week benefits
Working less could give us more, a new study suggests. Four-day work weeks without a reduction in income are found to boost workers' job satisfaction and physical and mental health, driven by enhanced work performance, lower levels of fatigue and fewer sleep problems, new research suggests. The findings, published in Nature Human Behaviour , highlight the potential for organisations and policymakers to improve employee well-being by re-evaluating workplace hours. Initiatives that reduce working hours - such as a six-hour workday or a 20% reduction in working time - have recently been trialled around the world. For example, the 4 Day Week Global initiative has run trials in many countries, with participation from about 375 companies, to understand how a shortened work week - without a reduction in pay - can result in a better working environment. To test the effects of the four-day work week (with no reduction in worker pay) intervention, Wen Fan, Juliet Schor and colleagues conducted six-month trials that involved 2896 employees across 141 organisations in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Ireland and the United States. Using survey data, they compared work- and health-related indicators (including burnout, job satisfaction, mental and physical health) before and after the intervention. They also compared these outcomes with those from 285 employees at 12 companies that did not trial the intervention. Fan and colleagues found that after the four-day work week intervention, there was a reduction in average working hours of about five hours per week. Employees with a reduction of eight hours or more per work week self-reported experiencing larger reductions in burnout and improvements in job satisfaction and mental health, as compared with those at companies that maintained a five-day workweek. Similar, though smaller, effects were observed among employees with between one and four hour and five and seven hour reductions in their work week. These benefits were partially explained by a reduced number of sleeping problems and levels of fatigue, and improved individual work ability. The authors suggest that shorter work weeks and reduced working hours without a reduction in salary can help to improve job satisfaction and worker health. They note that a key limitation of the study was companies self-selecting to participate, and resulted in a sample that consists predominantly of smaller companies from English-speaking countries. - Science Media Centre
Otago Daily Times
25-07-2025
- Health
- Otago Daily Times
Boost in job satisfaction, health: four-day work week benefits
Working less could give us more, a new study suggests. Four-day work weeks without a reduction in income are found to boost workers' job satisfaction and physical and mental health, driven by enhanced work performance, lower levels of fatigue and fewer sleep problems, new research suggests. The findings, published in Nature Human Behaviour, highlight the potential for organisations and policymakers to improve employee well-being by re-evaluating workplace hours. Initiatives that reduce working hours — such as a six-hour workday or a 20% reduction in working time — have recently been trialled around the world. For example, the 4 Day Week Global initiative has run trials in many countries, with participation from about 375 companies, to understand how a shortened work week — without a reduction in pay — can result in a better working environment. To test the effects of the four-day work week (with no reduction in worker pay) intervention, Wen Fan, Juliet Schor and colleagues conducted six-month trials that involved 2896 employees across 141 organisations in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, Ireland and the USA. Using survey data, they compared work- and health-related indicators (including burnout, job satisfaction, mental and physical health) before and after the intervention. They also compared these outcomes with those from 285 employees at 12 companies that did not trial the intervention. Fan and colleagues found that after the four-day work week intervention, there was a reduction in average working hours of about five hours per week. Employees with a reduction of eight hours or more per work week self-reported experiencing larger reductions in burnout and improvements in job satisfaction and mental health, as compared with those at companies that maintained a five-day workweek. Similar, though smaller, effects were observed among employees with between one and four hour and five and seven hour reductions in their work week. These benefits were partially explained by a reduced number of sleeping problems and levels of fatigue, and improved individual work ability. The authors suggest that shorter work weeks and reduced working hours without a reduction in salary can help to improve job satisfaction and worker health. They note that a key limitation of the study was companies self-selecting to participate, and resulted in a sample that consists predominantly of smaller companies from English-speaking countries. — Science Media Centre
Irish Independent
21-07-2025
- Health
- Irish Independent
Irish linked study reveals why working a four-day week is good for your health
That's according to a study of workers in the USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Ireland reported in Nature Human Behaviour. Up to now, research conducted into the benefits of four-day weeks had been mostly done on a single case basis, rather than across sectors or countries. The researchers involved were based in Boston College, the University of Cambridge and included Orla Kelly, Professor in Social Policy at UCD. Prof Kelly's research shows, she said that most organisations that have implement a four day week on a trial basis, continue after the trial ends. 'Organisations' choice to keep this new working model supports employees' subjective assessment of productivity gains,' said Prof Kelly 'Irish companies were actually among the first cohort to participate in the trials, said Wen Fan, Associate Professor of Sociology at Boston College, who was first author on the paper. 'In February 2022, 12 companies out of the 16 companies in the very first cohort were from Ireland and trials were supported by Forsa trade union.' 'In terms of industry composition, the largest group comes from the administrative, IT and telecom sectors.' In the study, workers said their job satisfaction and work performance had increased and fatigue and sleep problems decreased with a four-day week. The findings highlight the potential for organisations to improve the well-being of employees by reducing workplace hours, said the researchers. Trial results The scientists ran six month trials involving 2,896 employees in 141 organisations across seven English speaking countries, including Ireland. They compared work and health related indicators - such as burnout, job satisfaction, and mental health– before and after the intervention. The researchers also compared these results with the data generated from 285 employees at 12 companies that did not introduce a four-day week. Employees who had eight or more hours shaved off their working week, reported larger reductions in burnout and improvements in mental health compared to workers at companies who kept a five-day working week. There were similar, but smaller, effects seen for workers that had 1-4 or 5-7 hour reductions in their working week. The benefits, the researchers state, can be at least partially explained by less sleeping problems and fatigue, and improved individual work ability. Stress, burnout, fatigue and work-family conflict declined, as did the numbers experiencing sleep deprivation. Employees used the day off for hobbies, household work, grooming and increased the time they spent exercising. 'We have large well-being improvements over a range of metrics,' said Professor Wen. 'We find that the bigger the worktime reduction in hours, the bigger the well-being increase,' said Prof Wen. The researchers are calling for more future, randomised studies on worktime reductions, and possibly government sponsored trials. 'One of the most pressing questions is how worktime reduction can be scaled to non-office-based jobs where productivity gains are less tangible,' said Prof Kelly. 'A good first step would be for the government to provide support for a trial among these sectors to better understand how this opportunity to work less for the same pay can be universalised,' she added.
The Age
16-06-2025
- Science
- The Age
Inside Australia's oldest and coldest short-stay accommodation
Long before Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson crossed NSW's Blue Mountains, First Nations peoples braved its frozen ground in the last ice age to socialise or trade. They would stop for a night or two and catch up with old friends, having climbed above the treeline and down gullies to seek cold comfort in a cathedral-like cave that archaeologists say is the oldest high mountain site continually occupied by humans in Australia. Australian research published in Nature Human Behaviour on Tuesday has found evidence that 20,000 years ago, groups of people stopped in the cave – Dargan Shelter near Lithgow, NSW – to warm up in front of a fire, make tools, discuss business or do some matchmaking on the way to a corroboree in the mountains. 'It was short-stay accommodation ... on the way to business,' said University of Sydney archaeologist, cave art specialist and Gomeroi man, Wayne Brennan. It's still being used that way today. Located on a private property not far from Lithgow, known as Hatters Hideout Cave and Lodge, the cave is sometimes rented to small groups of campers. Owner Mark O'Carrigan said: 'It's the original Airbnb.' The archaeological dig found evidence of human occupation from the Late Pleistocene (last ice age) to the recent past. This included 693 artefacts, and faded rock art including a stencil of a child-sized hand that is still visible. The findings upend conventional wisdom. Far from inhospitable glacial landscapes stopping First Nations people from travelling, as previously thought, global research has found people travelled and gathered in high-altitude sites (such as Dargan at 1073 metres elevation) where water would have been frozen for much of the year. The lead author of the paper, University of Sydney archaeology lecturer Dr Amy Mosig Way, said Dargan is a significant site. Funded by the Australian Museum Foundation, the research was initiated by Brennan and Way to bring archaeologists and Indigenous knowledge keepers together.
Sydney Morning Herald
16-06-2025
- Science
- Sydney Morning Herald
Inside Australia's oldest and coldest short-stay accommodation
Long before Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson crossed NSW's Blue Mountains, First Nations peoples braved its frozen ground in the last ice age to socialise or trade. They would stop for a night or two and catch up with old friends, having climbed above the treeline and down gullies to seek cold comfort in a cathedral-like cave that archaeologists say is the oldest high mountain site continually occupied by humans in Australia. Australian research published in Nature Human Behaviour on Tuesday has found evidence that 20,000 years ago, groups of people stopped in the cave – Dargan Shelter near Lithgow, NSW – to warm up in front of a fire, make tools, discuss business or do some matchmaking on the way to a corroboree in the mountains. 'It was short-stay accommodation ... on the way to business,' said University of Sydney archaeologist, cave art specialist and Gomeroi man, Wayne Brennan. It's still being used that way today. Located on a private property not far from Lithgow, known as Hatters Hideout Cave and Lodge, the cave is sometimes rented to small groups of campers. Owner Mark O'Carrigan said: 'It's the original Airbnb.' The archaeological dig found evidence of human occupation from the Late Pleistocene (last ice age) to the recent past. This included 693 artefacts, and faded rock art including a stencil of a child-sized hand that is still visible. The findings upend conventional wisdom. Far from inhospitable glacial landscapes stopping First Nations people from travelling, as previously thought, global research has found people travelled and gathered in high-altitude sites (such as Dargan at 1073 metres elevation) where water would have been frozen for much of the year. The lead author of the paper, University of Sydney archaeology lecturer Dr Amy Mosig Way, said Dargan is a significant site. Funded by the Australian Museum Foundation, the research was initiated by Brennan and Way to bring archaeologists and Indigenous knowledge keepers together.
