Helsinki (05.10.2009 - Juhani Artto) It is difficult to understand why so few companies have invested so little -in terms of their risk management strategies- when it comes to looking after employees' brain and mind, says research professor Kiti Müller. She is the director of the Brain and Work Research Centre at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health.
However, when asked, she has an explanation for this, which she, herself, finds utterly unsatisfactory. The situation goes hand-in-hand with the fact that -until now- one has not been able to measure objectively and reliably the overall brain load level.
They are caused, for example, by cognitively demanding work tasks combined with internal, human related factors, such as lack of sleep or coexisting chronic diseases (diabetes, sleeping disorders, mental stress etc.). Therefore, company managers, used to paying attention only to measurable variables have ignored findings and lessons to be learned offered by brain researchers.
These lessons concern rest, sleep, stress and several other psycho-physiological matters. Nowadays, many enlightened laymen are aware to these but the way working life is organised in companies (by management) chooses to ignore these lessons in the main. Another mutual challenge concerns how to measure the quality of brainwork. How to measure the impacts of thinking: what is good and sustainable brainwork. These questions are critical for worklife in an information and learning society. All work requires planning and thinking. Overloading of the brain increases human error and the fatigued brain does not create.
According to Müller, a top-level brain researcher, experts will have the means to measure brain loads in the near future. The Centre, led by Müller, will apply this capability to research into working life.
She looks optimistically at the future. She believes that the resistance, of the managers, to the lessons advanced by brain researchers will "little by little" be broken down. But, before that happens innumerable working people will continue to suffer burnout and other negative consequences of brain overloads. For these individuals this is tragic; for companies and whole societies it is simply a stupid waste of human resources.
Müller wishes for safety-at-work representatives and experts from pioneer companies, in this field, to meet and develop working life models that do not ignore but utilise conclusions made by brain researchers.