According to a study from Tel Aviv University (Israel), getting along with co-workers has long-term health benefits . Specifically, Sharon Toker and her team have shown that employees who believe they have peer support at work tend to live longer . "We spend a lot of our waking hours at work, we don't have time to see friends on weekdays, so the workplace should be a place to find emotional support," Toker emphasizes.
In an investigation of 820 working adults over two decades, scientists showed that people who do not feel supported in the workplace are 2.4 times more likely to die . The results are published in the journal Health Psychology .
To turn the office into a "good for health" place, Toker suggests creating coffee nooks where colleagues meet and talk spontaneously, organizing an internal virtual social network similar to Facebook, and scheduling informal social outings for employees, among other initiatives. .
