![]() ![]() 17 A nationwide US survey has implied that scheduling control could benefit all workers, not just those with conflicting demands, and regardless of schedule. 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. 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. 15, 16 The health benefits of worktime control may stem from advantages in combining work and non-work demands. 14 A potential protecting factor could be employee control over working times, recently shown to predict health especially among female employees. There is an urgent need for evidence on tools that could alleviate the health impairments related to work stress. 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. Work 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. Among the men, the findings were less consistent and not replicable using aggregated measures of worktime control.Ĭonclusions: Good control over working times reduces the adverse effect of work stress on sickness absence especially among female employees. This finding was replicated in the analyses using workplace aggregates of worktime control. 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. Main results: Among the women, individually measured control over daily working hours and days off moderated the association between work stress and sickness absence. Participants: 16 139 public sector employees who had no medically certified sickness absences in the year preceding the survey. Aggregated measures of worktime control according to workplaces were used to control for differences in reactivity and response style. Adjustments were made for demographics and behavioural health risks. The mean follow up period was 28.2 (SD 8.1) months. 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. A survey of job strain, effort-reward imbalance, and control over daily working hours and days off was carried out in 2000–01. 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.ĭesign: Prospective cohort study. ![]()
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