Healthy lifestyles can be prompted by flexible working

Employees will adopt healthier lifestyles if they are offered the chance to do flexible working at their place of work, new research has suggested.

Lead author of the report Dr Joseph Grzywacz of Wake Forest University School of Medicine commented that if workers perceive the flexible working initiative as real then they will be prompted into taking up a healthier lifestyle, Medical News Today reports.

Although further research is needed, these results suggest that flexibility programmes that are situated within a broader organisational commitment to employee health may be useful for promoting positive lifestyle habits, he said.

Due to be published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, the research has discovered that workplace flexibility may be closely linked to workplace health.

The study tested the sleep patterns of individuals, as well as physical activity, engagement in stress management programs, participation in health education activities and self-appraised overall lifestyle.

ClickAJob chief executive Yngve Traberg is well familiar with these findings. In operating an online business, staffers can actually work at any time from any location, which solves a lot of issues, particularly time-sensitive ones.

Flexible working is not only healthier, it relieves stress and keeps people motivated, he says.

A working mother, for instance, is more at ease with a schedule that gives her quality time with her child, he points out.

By allowing flexible working time, her considerable skills and familiarity with company procedures keep working positively. Mum's happy, child's happy, employer's happy - and happy means healthy AND PROFITABLE.

Not forgetting, he concludes, that with people working flexible hours, expensive additional staff are often no longer necessary.