Upto 39 hours of work good for mental & physical health

Working more than 39 hours a week is bad for your mental and physical health, a new study says.

Australian National University researchers are calling for a drop in the internationally-accepted 48-hour work week, agreed to about 80 years ago to avoid worker burn-out.

They’ve published a research paper, ‘Not all hours are equal: could time be a social determinant of health?’, after examining the work lives of 8000 adults.

The researchers have also called for a change in culture that says working long hours is a requisite to doing a good job.

About two in three full-time Australian workers are putting in more than 40 hours a week.

‘Long work hours erode a person’s mental and physical health, because it leaves less time to eat well and look after themselves properly,’ lead researcher Dr Huong Dinh said.

The researchers say the overall healthy work limit should be set at 39 hours a week – and women should be working less than men.

For women, 34 hours is the ideal healthy weekly limit, but for men, it can be up to 47 hours because they are considered to spend less time on care or domestic duties.

The paper’s co-author Professor Lyndall Strazdins said long hours were not required for a job to be done well.

‘Australians also need to dispel the widespread belief that people need to work long hours to do a good job,’ she said.