Psychosocial work factors and long sickness absence in Europe

This studied the relationships between psychosocial work factors and long sickness absence (>7 days per year).

It drew on a large dataset from 34 European countries, incorporating >32k employees. 25 psychosocial work factors were incorporated into the analysis.

The 25 factors were grouped under the following categories:

Job demands (emotional demands, demands for hiding emotions, responsibilities etc)
Influence and development (degrees of freedom, predictability etc)
Social relationships and leadership (role clarity, conflicts, quality of leadership etc)
Workplace violence (violence, sexual harassment, bullying etc)
Working hours (shift work, long hours, asocial working hours etc)
Other (job promotion, job insecurity, work-life balance)

There’s way too many findings to cover, so I’ll pick out a few.

Results:

All up, factors related to job demands (quantitative demands and demands for hiding emotions, possibilities for career development, social relationships (role conflicts, quality of leadership, social support, sense of community), workplace violence (physical violence, bullying, discrimination) and job promotion were all associated with long sickness absence.

The strongest associations were found for workplace violence factors. Older age was a strong risk factor, as was lower skilled occupations, and occupational hazards like physical, chemical, biomechanical hazards.

Virtually no differences were found between gender or country when pooling the factors – except for three factors between genders. [N.B. There seems to be only two choices on the survey: male and female, so I’m uncertain how the findings may represent the non-binary population.]

Long sickness absence prevalence was higher for women compared to men. Men were more likely to be exposed to physical, biomechanical and chemical hazards. Women were more likely to be exposed to emotional demands, demands for hiding emotions, low degree of freedom, low quality of leadership, workplace violence (sexual harassment, bullying and discrimination) and low job promotion.

Men, in contrast, were more likely to be exposed to quantitative demands, demands for responsibility, low predictability, low meaning of work, low role clarity, low social support, long and asocial hours, night work and work-life imbalance.

Interestingly, long working hours were found to have a “protective factor” for long sickness absence in men. However, this may be explained by the healthy worker effect, which describes a population of well-suited and healthy people remaining in that environment while the less-suited burn out and leave. This “protective factor” may also be explained by the possibility that those working the longest hours simply have less time/capability to actually take sickness leave.

Other research found that working >48 hours a week decreased sickness absenteeism but increased sickness presenteeism.

Along with the usual limitations of this type of study design, the authors note that a reverse causation can’t be eliminated, since it’s possible that long sickness absence may also impact the psychosocial work environment.

The specific findings are highlighted below with odds ratios, confidence intervals and p-values.

Authors: Slany, C., Schütte, S., Chastang, J. F., Parent-Thirion, A., Vermeylen, G., & Niedhammer, I. (2014). International journal of occupational and environmental health, 20(1), 16-25

Study link: https://doi.org/10.1179/2049396713Y.0000000048

Link to the LinkedIn article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/psychosocial-work-factors-long-sickness-absence-ben-hutchinson