News
Dr. Laura Linnan, Professor and Director of the Carolina Center for Healthy Work Design and Worker Well-Being, was recently interviewed in a TIME feature on workplace health. She spoke about how work-related stress can directly impact people’s overall well-being. Dr. Linnan explained how Total Worker Health® is a good model to improve worker health.
Read More About Dr. Laura Linnan here.
Key Highlights from the article include:
- U.S. adults spend more of their waking hours working, which is bound to directly impact their overall health.
- The Total Worker Health® Program seeks to improve all domains of employee health, from risk of on-the-job accidents and illnesses to psychological well-being—a marked contrast from classic workplace wellness initiatives, which tend to focus on narrow goals like boosting physical activity or encouraging smoking cessation.
- The level of control someone has over their work predicts how their job will affect their physical and mental health, sometimes more than workload alone.
- People who find their work meaningful may experience improved well-being if they do not work too much or become overly invested.
- In a recent study, men who felt they put forth a lot of effort on the job but were not adequately rewarded for it had a 50% higher risk of heart disease than peers who felt recognized.
- Studies have also shown that four-day work weeks improve employees’ mental health, sleep, and physical activity levels, further underscoring the benefits of flexible working hours.
You can read the TIME article here to learn more about workplace health and harms.
Learn more about the Total Worker Health® Certificate Program offered by the Gillings School of Global Public Health here.