Increase Productivity/Performance

How does background music influence stress and our performance on manual tasks?   Felszeghy and teammates set out to answer this question by studying dental students listening to what was categorized as “slow background music”: “the music reduced stress but also increased motivation to learn and practice. . . . Time use and quality of cavity preparation were enhanced.

Patelaki and colleagues’ work confirms the value of developing spaces where people can walk. The researchers report that “Older adults whose response accuracy ‘paradoxically’ improved during walking manifested neural signatures of both behavioral improvement and aging, suggesting that their flexibility in reallocating neural resources while walking might be maintained for the cognitive but not for the motor inhibitory component.” Some of the 62–79-year-old participants’ cognitive performance improved as they walked compared to when they were seated.

Lauterbach and Kunze probe links between activity-based working and employee absenteeism.  They report that they studied “whether transitioning from cellular offices to an activity-based flexible office (A-FO) impacts employee absenteeism over time. . . . Using a sample of 2,017 white-collar workers tracked over 8 years, we quasi-experimentally investigated if absenteeism in the group with the office design intervention (1,035 individuals) differed from the control group (982 individuals). . . .