Search

OBJECTIVE: Work-related stress is an important public health concern in all industrialized countries and is linked to reduced labor market affiliation and an increased disease burden. We aimed to quantify the labor market costs of work-related stress for a large sample of Danish employees. METHODS: We linked four consecutive survey waves on occupational health and five national longitudinal registers with date-based information on wage and social benefits payments. From 2012 to 2020, we followed survey participants for two year-periods, yielding 110 559 person-years. We identified work stress by combining three dichotomous stress indicators: (i) self-perceived work stress, (ii) Cohen 4-level perceived stress scale, and (iii) job strain. Using the multi-state expected labor market affiliation (ELMA) method, we estimated the labor market expenses associated with work-related stress. RESULTS: Of the employees, 26–37% had at least one work-stress indicator. Men aged 35–64 years and women aged 18–64 years with work-related stress had up to 81.6 fewer workdays and up to 50.7 more days of sickness absence during follow-up than similarly aged men without work stress. The average annual work absenteeism loss per employee linked to work-related stress was €1903 for men and €3909 for women, corresponding to 3.3% of men’s average annual wages and 9.0% of women’s average annual wages, respectively. The total annual expenses were €305.2 million for men and €868.5 million for women. CONCLUSION: Work-related stress was associated with significant labor market costs due to increased sickness absence and unemployment. The prevention of work-related stress is an important occupational health concern, and the development of effective interventions should be given high priority.

OBJECTIVE: Previous literature has established associations between psychosocial working conditions and sickness absence (SA), but only few studies have examined associations among younger employees. This study aimed to investigate associations between psychosocial working conditions and SA among employees, aged 15–30 years, who entered the labor market in Denmark between 2010 and 2018.METHOD: We followed 301 185 younger employees in registers for on average 2.6 years. Using job exposure matrices, we assessed job insecurity, quantitative demands, decision authority, job strain, emotional demands, and work-related physical violence. Adjusted rate ratios of SA spells of any length were estimated for women and men separately with Poisson models.RESULTS: Among women, employment in occupations with high quantitative demands, low decision authority, high job strain, high emotional demands, or high work-related physical violence was associated with higher rates of SA. Being employed in occupations with high versus low emotional demands showed the strongest association with SA, with a rate ratio of 1.44 [95% confidence interval (CI) 1.41–1.47]. Among men, being employed in occupations with low decision authority showed the strongest association with SA (1.34, 95% CI 1.31–1.37), whereas occupations with high quantitative demands, high job strain, and high emotional demands were associated with lower rates of SA.CONCLUSION: We found that several psychosocial working conditions were associated with SA spells of any length. Associations with SA spells of any length resemble associations with long-term SA, suggesting that results from previous studies on long-term SA may be generalizable to all lengths of SA among younger employees.

OBJECTIVES: Working few hours a week, known as marginal part-time work, may increase both job and income insecurity, which have been linked to the risk of depression. This study examines the association between marginal part-time work and depression and the mediating role of job and income insecurity.METHODS: We included 30 523 respondents of the Danish Labor Force Survey (DLFS) between 2010 and 2017 and linked them to register-based information on weekly working hours, which was used to identify full-time workers and model group-based trajectories of marginal part-time. These data were linked with survey information on job and income insecurity, and register-based information on hospital-diagnosed depression or redeemed anti-depressant drugs in the following two years. We estimated hazard ratios (HR) by Cox proportional hazards models and conducted mediation analyses to estimate the natural direct and indirect effects using job and income insecurity as mediators.RESULTS: We identified three distinct trajectories of marginal part-time work: constant marginal part-time work, mobile towards marginal part-time work, and fluctuating in and out of marginal part-time work. Compared with full-time workers, the constant [HR 2.42, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.83–3.20], mobile (HR 2.84, 95% CI 2.16–3.75), and fluctuating (HR 3.51, 95% CI 2.07–5.97) trajectories all had higher risks of depression. There was no evidence of mediation by either job (HR 1.02, 95% CI 0.92–1.12) or income (HR 0.98, 95% CI 0.89–1.08) insecurity.CONCLUSIONS: We found a higher risk of depression following marginal part-time work. The higher risk was not mediated by job or income insecurity.

Purpose Common mental health problems are a substantial burden in many western countries. Studies have pointed out that work related factors can both increase and decrease the risk of developing mental health problems. Influence at work is a key factor relating the psychosocial work environment to employees mental health. However, little is known regarding how contemporary employees experience and understand influence at work. The purpose of this study is to explore this in depth. Methods We conducted semi-structured interviews with 59 employees in knowledge and relational work and analysed the data using principles from Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Findings TWe identified three themes each consisting of two interrelated parts, where the second part describes the consequences of the identified type of influence for employees: 1) work tasks and performance, 2) relations and belonging, 3) identity and becoming. Conclusions The interviewed employees had a multifaceted understanding of influence at work and that influence at work mattered to them in different but important ways. Our hope is that managers, employees and consultants will be inspired by the three themes when designing work tasks, organizations and interventions in order to increase the level of influence and thereby help enhance the mental well-being of employees.

Influence at work is known to be an important factor for workers health. Researchers have called for studies on influence at work as a contextualized phenomenon. Based on individual interviews with managers and focus group interviews with employees in three care workplaces, the article shows how the materiality of the work setting ties employees’ influence to perform tasks in both hindering and enabling ways. We show that a work environment where employees’ influence is hindered produces negative experiences in the work environment, while an environment where employees’ influence is enabled produces positive experiences. Additionally, we study how employees influence the material aspects of their workplace.We present a view of influence at work as constituted by materiality and social organization in sociomaterial assemblages. This study reintroduces materiality as a concern in psychosocial work environment research and contributes a sociomaterial view on influence at work and materiality.

Abstract Background The current understanding of the relationship between unwanted sexual attention at work and long-term sickness absence (LTSA) is limited for three reasons: 1) the under-researched role of unwanted sexual attention perpetrated by individuals outside the work organization; 2) a widespread use of self-reported measures of sickness absence, with an unclear identification of sickness absence episodes of long duration; 3) the cross-sectional design of most existing studies. The aim of this study was therefore to investigate the relationship between self-reported unwanted sexual attention at work and subsequent LTSA (≥3 weeks), stratifying by gender and source of exposure (i.e., colleagues, managers and/or subordinates vs. clients/customers/patients). Methods This prospective study is based on a pooled sample of 14,605 employees from three Danish surveys conducted in 2000, 2004 and 2005, providing a total of 19,366 observations. A single questionnaire-based item was used to assess exposure to unwanted sexual attention. The pooled dataset was merged with Danish register data on LTSA. The risk of first-onset episode of LTSA (up to 18 months after baseline) in connection with unwanted sexual attention was examined using Cox proportional hazards models. We estimated Hazard ratios (HR) and 95 % confidence intervals (95 % CI) adjusted for age, influence at work, work pace, occupational group and mode of data collection. We also adjusted for repeated measures from individual respondents by stratifying the Cox models by wave of survey. Results Unwanted sexual attention from colleagues, managers and/or subordinates predicted LTSA among men (HR 2.66; 95 % CI 1.42-5.00). Among women, an elevated but non-statistically significant risk of LTSA (HR 1.18; 95 % CI 0.65-2.14) was found. Unwanted sexual attention from clients/customers/patients did not predict LTSA, neither among men nor among women. Conclusions The findings indicate a significantly elevated risk of LTSA, among men only, in relation to exposure to unwanted sexual attention from colleagues, managers and/or subordinates. This study therefore suggests both individual and organizational costs associated with unwanted sexual attention at work. Due to the low prevalence of unwanted sexual attention, larger studies with more statistical power are needed to confirm (or disconfirm) the present findings.