In a study carried out at the University of Southern California, students who were insulted by a professor on the way to the test performed worse in memory tasks than others who had not been spoken to rudely. In another, students who had witnessed a rude interaction went on to perform more poorly on tasks than a control group which had not.

And it’s not just the boss who needs to think twice before taking out a bad mood on a member of staff. Rudeness by a peer or colleague had just as negative an effect as unpleasant behaviour from an authority figure.

It’s unclear whether the increase in mistakes is caused by the emotional arousal of witnessing conflict, or simple distraction.

The BMJ highlights the implications for surgical teams, where errors can have especially grave consequences. But even if your job doesn’t involve life or death decisions, it’s probably worth taking a deep breath and a walk around the block if you think you might be about to let rip!

Sustainable transport charity Sustrans is asking people to pledge to switch a car journey to greener means – walking, cycling or using public transport. The Change your world campaign aims to see how much green mileage supporters can clock up by 4 July.

According to Sustrans, in the UK only 2 out of 5 local journeys of less than 5 miles are made in a sustainable way. Sustrans wants to see this double to 4 out of 5.

With the weather getting warmer, walking or cycling can seem more appealing. And starting your working day with some exercise and fresh air is better for your health, and probably your productivity, as well as for the planet. The walkit.com website provides a helpful route planner for selected UK cities, letting you choose more direct or quieter options, and giving you scores for calories burned as well as carbon saved.

The new cyclestreets.net site aims to help cyclists in the same way, with route plans and photos. Many employers offer facilities for cyclists, including secure cycle storage, showers and changing rooms, or tax breaks and loans for buying a bike, under the government’s Cycle to Work scheme.

And the journey planner on the Directgov website helps you plan your journey to work, linking together different modes of transport such as trains, buses and walking.

If you can’t get to your workplace by public transport, or it’s just too far to walk or cycle, there are still ways to push for greener work travel – ask about putting up a liftshare noticeboard, or try looking on a site like liftshare.com to see if anyone else is going your way.

There are more green travel tips for your work in our working greener section.

Rather than showing staff the red card for throwing ‘sickies’ in order to catch the games from South Africa, next month’s football tournament could be a perfect opportunity for employers to test out making more use of flexible working hours.

Many workplaces already operate a system of flexitime which allows staff the freedom beyond their core hours to come in early and go home early, or get into work late and leave the office later. Those that don’t yet, might find it’s a win-win for their staff and their business.

Employers should also bear in mind the one in five UK employees who work outside core hours, many of whom will also want to watch the World Cup, as well as UK based workers of different nationalities who want to watch their home team.

The TUC’s Brendan Barber said:

“Of course some people won’t want to watch the World Cup, but for those who would like to follow games at home, in the pub, or on the radio or internet at work, the best way to ease tensions is for employers to discuss the issue with staff.

Rather than impose a blanket ban on football, and run the risk of de-motivating staff and losing hours through unauthorised sick days, we would encourage employers to let people watch the games if they like – and claim back their time afterwards. That way, everyone wins.”

Whether it’s about major events like the World Cup or just picking up the kids from school, allowing people more flexibility in how and when they do their work makes them happier, cutting absenteeism and raising productivity for their employers.

Check out our advice on working through the World Cup.

Stress is a likely factor, but extra hours in the office also leave less time to relax, get enough sleep and enough physical exercise, all of which help protect against heart disease.

Most workers probably aren’t stuck in the office for as many extra hours as that, but unpaid overtime is rife in modern ‘white collar’ jobs. Many of us feel obliged to put in extra time to meet that deadline, or to fit in with a long-hours culture, and there’s no doubt it’s bad for our health and wellbeing.

Long hours are bad enough when we’re paid for them, but over 5 million people at work in the UK regularly do unpaid overtime, giving their employers £27.4 billion of free work every year.

If you’re regularly stuck in work later than you’d like, take a look at the workSMART work your proper hours pages. You can use our unpaid overtime calculator to work out just how much extra you’re doing, and visit our interactive long hours clinic for tailored advice on how to improve your situation.

The British Heart Foundation also has information on stress and heart disease, and advice on healthy lifestyles at work. www.bhf.org.uk/HealthAtWork

As reported in the Guardian recently, the 2010/2011 Jobfile handbook, published by VT Lifeskills, lists ‘astronaut’ as a possible career option for the first time. There’s certainly plenty of competition: the European Space Agency recruited 6 astronauts last year, including British helicopter pilot Timothy Peake, from a field of 8,400.

But while few people will see their careers literally blasting off into space, the space industry already supports over 68,000 technical, scientific, engineering and administrative jobs, and contributes over £6.5 billion to the UK economy.

The government’s space strategy aims to make sure that the sector, focused on satellite technology, continues to grow in size and influence. A new British Space Agency was launched earlier this year, bringing together the separate space budgets and programmes.

“For the first time, we will have a body with a firm grip on the future,” said the science minister, Lord Drayson. “Britain’s space industry has defied the recession. It can grow to £40bn a year and create 100,000 jobs in 20 years. The government’s commitments on space will help the sector go from strength to strength.”

For more information on careers in space, see the British Space Agency website. ukspaceagency.bis.gov.uk

But a full third of the 6,000 internships currently advertised by employers on the Government’s Graduate Talent Pool website are unpaid. As well as being blatantly unfair, unless an intern is purely work-shadowing, that is, watching but not actually doing anything, this is probably illegal. If they’re doing work-related tasks, with set hours and a duty to turn up and do the work, they’re probably defined in law as a ‘worker’, qualifying for the minimum wage, working time and paid holiday rights.

Only for the rich?
It’s not right that opportunities should be closed to those without family resources to support them while they work for nothing. And if you happen to be from somewhere outside the south-east of England, you’re in trouble too – for some sectors as many as 90% of the internships on the Graduate Talent Pool are in London. Without London-based family or friends to put them up rent-free, work experience could end up getting young graduates even further into debt.

Gain or grind?
A good internship can offer fantastic experience, with a chance to learn on the job and gain valuable contacts, while probably making a few cups of tea along the way. But there’s not much to value about work experience where all you’re learning is how many sugars your colleagues take.

Many interns stick at a placement in the hopes that things will improve, or just to get that crucial reference at the end of the slog. Says one on the www.internsanonymous.org website, “I’m terrified that any refusal will lead to a terrible reference… ensuring that I never refuse to do anything, no matter how absurd or mundane. In the meantime I am effectively paying, since I have to pay for my own travel expenses, to have my dignity and self-respect peeled away.”

Interns’ rights
Most interns don’t know their rights, and may be afraid to stand up for them for fear of losing that crucial good reference. The TUC is campaigning to make internships better. Says TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber, “It is vital that we crack down on those internships that offer little but hard graft for no reward. Employers need to know that there’s no such thing as free labour.”

You can find out more about interns’ rights, contribute case studies and experiences on the TUC’s campaign website www.rightsforinterns.org.uk

With many employers and staff agreeing to reduce hours in order to avoid job losses, it seems the reduction in working time has had a knock on effect on the number of people working paid and unpaid overtime. So whilst this is a record value for unpaid overtime, the number of people doing it is actually down by 168,000 on last year, meaning the 5.07m remaining are putting in even longer hours.

The TUC’s Brendan Barber said:

‘The recession has forced many employees to do less hours in an effort to save jobs and this has also had an effect on the amount of unpaid overtime worked. This flexibility and the sacrifices made by staff has saved jobs and kept companies afloat. Bosses should use Work Your Proper Hours Day to thank staff for the extra effort they are putting in to help their business through the recession.

‘But millions of people are still working far too many hours and often they are not even being paid for it. This long hours culture causes stress and damages people’s health. Most employers are understandably focused on fighting their way through the recession. But they shouldn’t forget that working cultures such as pointless presenteeism – which keeps people at their desks for no good reason – is not just bad for staff but bad for business too.’

You can find out more about Work Your Proper Hours Day 2010 at www.workyourproperhoursday.com

By allowing staff to loosen their ties and leave their jackets at home, the TUC is hoping most employers will adopt a more relaxed approach to office attire, if only for the hottest days of the summer, and help make work a bit more bearable.

Often the best way for staff to keep cool inside when it’s swelteringly hot outside is for them to sport less formal, more casual clothing, and come into work in shirt sleeves and shorts. Casual dress makes business sense too. Employers who provide their staff with a cool and comfortable work environment are going to get more out of them when it’s hot. If you can’t dress down into more appropriate summer clothing, or if you work in offices without air-conditioning, fans or a plentiful supply of cool drinking water, you’re going to feel lethargic, and lack inspiration or creativity.

Where employees are attending important external meetings or are dealing with the public, it may not be appropriate for them to turn up to work in vest tops and shorts, says the TUC. But so long as staff are turned out appropriately, it should be possible to agree on a dress code that both fits with the corporate image and helps keep staff cool.

Summers are only going to get hotter and drier over the coming years as a result of climate change, so working out how to keep workplaces and staff cool is going to be of increasing concern for employers. In fact, summer dress could help the environment and budgets at the same time, if it means the company can turn down the air con a notch or two.

Although the law states that staff should work in a reasonable temperature, there is no legal maximum, only a legal minimum temperature. If you can feel the temperature rising where you work, check out our tips on working through a heatwave.

But the one which stuck most with staff was the requirement to monitor what their friends were writing on their profiles, and to delete anything that might ‘violate AP standards’ – in other words, you’re responsible for your friends as well as yourself. Kevin Keane, of the AP staff union, the News Media Guild, said “It is making some people cringe. It is not appropriate for a company that heralds free speech”.

Companies obviously have legitimate concerns around conduct online – stopping  confidentiality breaches or bringing the organisation into disrepute, and the best way to approach this is in negotiating a realistic and fair policy with staff, but AP seem to have stepped several paces over the mark.

If you’re concerned about what you write on social networking, and how it could affect you at work, check out our interactive training module, Not Safe For Work, where Guardian social networking expert Jemima Kiss tells you some of the areas you need to be considering.

Different people are using it in different ways, and many finding it opens up some great new ways to keep in touch or to make new contacts. Problem is, it’s just like any other social network in that it also opens up some very effective new ways to lose your job, if you’re not thinking about the implications of how you’re using it.

A US student looking for a summer job recently found this out when she was offered an intern position at California IT giant Cisco. She was in two minds about taking up the job, because of the long commute, and sent the tweet “Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work” to what she thought was just her 45 close friends.

Unfortunately for her, a Cisco manager was monitoring public tweets about the company, and wrote her back a public reply: “Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web“. As the manager was a heavily followed Twitter user, this spread all over the service in no time, earning her the internet nickname of Cisco Fatty.

She has some thoughts about how this scandal blew up so quickly on her own blog, and it’s a salutary tale for all of us using social media. Here on workSMART, we’re concerned that whilst people are holding more of the conversations they normally have offline with friends online, and a growing number of people network for work on social media (all the time linked to their personal life and activities), there’s going to be an awkward period for employment relationships, until employers catch up with the technology and grow slightly thicker cyber-skins.

We’ve actually made an online tool, called Not Safe For Work, which gives a basic training in loads of the ways your computer might end up getting you the sack if you don’t prepare properly (naturally including social media). It features videos from industry experts and a personal advice generator to give you a prescription based on your own situation. Give it a go now at www.worksmart.org.uk/nsfw