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"GIVEN the widespread adoption of smartphones, text messaging, video calling and social media, today's professionals mean it when they brag about staying connected to work 24/7." Too much connectivity can damage the quality of one's work, says Robert Sutton, author of "Good Boss, Bad Boss" and a professor at Stanford. Because of devices, he says, 'nobody seems to actually pay full attention; everybody is doing a worse job because they are doing more things." Mobile devices and social media, he says, "make us a little more oblivious, a little more incompetent." Just recall those pilots who overshot their destination two years ago because they were using computers, he adds.

A new study reports that employees at exercise-friendly workplaces get more total moderate-to-vigorous physical activity than do others - a sign that bosses might be able to influence the fitness of their workers.

American companies and organizations spend billions of dollars every year on leadership training for their managers. To improve job performance they ought instead to focus on what managers believe about their employees, a study by the University of California, Riverside shows.

IN early 2009, statisticians inside the Googleplex here embarked on a plan code-named Project Oxygen. Their mission was to devise something far more important to the future of Google Inc. than its next search algorithm or app. They wanted to build better bosses.

We spend a large percentage of our lives at the office, engaged in the drudgery of work. Although we obsess over the medical benefits of various leisure activities - should I do yoga? take long walks? not watch television? - the amount of time we might spend in downward facing dog pose pales in comparison to the amount of time we spend seated in our chair, staring at the computer screen, surrounded by co-workers. A new study led by Arie Shirom at Tel Aviv University reveals the powerful impact of the workplace on longevity. The researchers tracked 820 adults for twenty years, starting with a routine health examination in 1988. The subjects worked in various professions, from finance to manufacturing to health care. They were interviewed repeatedly about conditions at their workplace, from the behavior of the boss to the niceness of their colleagues. Over the ensuing decades, their health was closely monitored, allowing the scientists to control for various medical conditions, such as high blood pressure, smoking and depression.