Employee worktime control moderates the effects of job strain and effort-reward imbalance on sickness absence: the 10-town study

Abstract

Study objective: To examine whether the effects of work stress on sickness absence vary by the level of control the employees have over their working times. Design: Prospective cohort study. A survey of job strain, effort-reward imbalance, and control over daily working hours and days off was carried out in 2000-01. The survey responses were linked with registered data on the number of medically certified (.3 days) sickness absences from one year before the survey until the end of 2003. The mean follow up period was 28.2 (SD 8.1) months. Adjustments were made for demographics and behavioural health risks. Aggregated measures of worktime control according to workplaces were used to control for differences in reactivity and response style. Setting: Ten towns in Finland. Participants: 16 139 public sector employees who had no medically certified sickness absences in the year preceding the survey. Main results: Among the women, individually measured control over daily working hours and days off moderated the association between work stress and sickness absence. The combination of high stress and good worktime control was associated with lower absence rates than a combination of high stress and poor worktime control. This finding was replicated in the analyses using workplace aggregates of worktime control. Among the men, the findings were less consistent and not replicable using aggregated measures of worktime control. Conclusions: Good control over working times reduces the adverse effect of work stress on sickness absence especially among female employees. W ork stress has been shown to affect several public health domains such as perceived health, 1 2 psychological health, 3 cardiovascular morbidity, 4 5 sickness absence, 6-8 and mortality. 10 11 In specifying the backgrounds of these health effects, the two most prevalent work stress models have identified health risks in ''job strain'' resulting from a combination of high job demands with low control over job content 12 and in ''effort-reward imbalance'' originating from a lack of reciprocity between high efforts spent at work with low rewards received. 13There is an urgent need for evidence on tools that could alleviate the health impairments related to work stress.14 A potential protecting factor could be employee control over working times, recently shown to predict health especially among female employees.15 16 The health benefits of worktime control may stem from advantages in combining work and non-work demands. Worktime control could also be used to flee from particularly stressful work situations and to choose working at times of best possible resources and support.Previously, European Union survey analyses have suggested that working time autonomy helps to reduce the health risk relating to unfavourable working times, but that the positive effect is weak compared with the negative effect of unsociable hours.17 A nationwide US survey has implied that scheduling control could benefit all workers, not just those with conflicting demands, and regardless of...

Worktime control: theoretical conceptualization, current empirical knowledge, and research agenda

“…It can be hypothesized that especially employees with relatively high obligations in private life (eg, parents of young children) and employees with a higher need for recovery (eg, some subgroups of older or chronically ill employees) may benefit most from increased WTC. In line with this, previous research found WTC to be mostly beneficial for women who combined fulltime employment with long domestic working hours (37)(38)(39). Regarding subgroup analyses, we also advise to elucidate the percentage of workers that experienced a change in WTC and compare these change groups with stable (low and high) WTC groups regarding indicators of well-being, health, and performance over time [cf.…”

Predictors of Job Satisfaction in Dental Professionals of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Federation

“…(13). The consequences of the lack of work satisfaction are reflected in frequent sick-leaves, mistakes at work, professional burnout, abandoning the work, decreased satisfaction of the treated persons and poor quality of the doctor's mental health (10,(14)(15)(16)(17).…”

Uso combinado de modelos de estresse no trabalho e a saúde auto-referida na enfermagem

“…Recent studies have recommended that the two models should be used in combination, in relation to a given outcome. 4 Studies on occupations have demonstrated that the predictive power of the combination (in comparison with the result relating to each model) is greater with regard to self-reported health, 3,18 insomnia, 19 mental stress at work, 4 acute myocardial infarction, 20 absenteeism due to illness 1,9 and depression. 26 No investigations on the effect of the combined models on health-related outcomes in Brazil were identifi ed.…”