There has been a recent study conducted over the performance of people who are above 40 in age. They concluded that the overall performance gets better if they work for 25 hours in a week. But when the working time increases, their performance deteriorates significantly. It is speculated that the reason is most likely stress and declining health.

Conducting the study

The study was published in Melbourne Institute Worker Paper series. It involved multiple number of tests based on working habits of 3000 Australian men and 3500 Australian women. The researchers asked them to read some words aloud and recite the list of numbers. The first part analyzed the subject’s knowledge whereas the other part measured the reasoning and memory.

The conclusion was that the men who worked for 25 hours a week, were best in performance. Those who were working for 55 hours in a week performed so bad that even unemployed were better than them in the tests.

Professor Colin McKenzie from Keio University called work a double-edged sword and said, “While work can stimulate brain activity, long working hours can cause fatigue and stress, which potentially damage cognitive functions. Full-time work (40 hours a week) is still better than no work in terms of maintaining cognitive functioning. But it is not maximizing the positive effects of work”.

Stress impacts the perfomance

Once the limit is crossed, stress can impact the performance. He finds that the stress and fatigue is the cause behind this problem. He talked about the prospect of increasing retirement age and said that if the working hour is kept in check, then it can prove to be better than the present system.

This is one thing which must be kept in mind by the strategist of the country, if they want best results from the employer.