ArticleEuropean journal of public health2024
How does lowering psychosocial risks influence sickness absence? A prospective cohort study analyzed as a quasi-experiment.
Article in European journal of public health, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- The impact of working conditions on sickness absence among older workers: a systematic review.European journal of ageing · 2026Review
- Favorable changes in health- and work-related factors and subsequent work ability in midlife and older social and health care employees.International archives of occupational and environmental health · 2026Article
- Sickness absence with common mental disorders and antidepressant prescriptions across different employment branches during as compared to before the Covid-19 pandemic-an observational study covering the Swedish population aged 18-65 years.European journal of public health · 2025Observational
- A resource-oriented perspective on the aging workforce - exploring job resource profiles and their associations with various health indicators.BMC public health · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundWe examined how reducing work-related psychosocial stressors affected long-term sickness absence of younger and older employees.
methodsWe used data from 43 843 public sector employees in Finland who participated in surveys in 2018 and 2020. We assessed psychosocial factors, such as job demands, job control, work effort, job rewards and worktime control. We obtained sickness absence data from registers for spells longer than 10 consecutive working days. We applied age-specific propensity score weighting and generalized linear models to estimate the effects of changes in psychosocial factors between 2018 and 2020 on sickness absence in 2020.
resultsAmong employees under 50 years, increasing job rewards by 1 SD reduced the risk of sickness absence by 17% [risk ratio (RR) 0.83, 95% CI 0.72-0.96]. Among employees aged 50 years or older, decreasing job demands by 1 SD reduced the risk of sickness absence by 13% (RR 0.87, 95% CI 0.78-0.98), and increasing job control by 1 SD reduced the risk by 12% (RR 0.88, 95% CI 0.76-1.01). Changes in efforts and worktime control had no significant associations with sickness absence.
conclusionsReducing psychosocial stressors can lower the occurrence of long-term sickness absence, but the associations differ by age group. Younger workers benefit more from enhancing job rewards, while older workers benefit more from lowering job demands and increasing job control. To establish the causal impact of psychosocial risk reduction on sickness absence across age groups, future research should employ randomized controlled trials as the methodological approach.
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