Documents Feveile, Helene 2 results

"Objectives
To identify differences in risk of long-term sickness absence between female and male employees in Denmark and to examine to what extent differences could be explained by work environment factors.
Methods
A cohort of 5026 employees (49.1% women, mean age 40.4?years; 50.9% men, mean age 40.2?years) was interviewed in 2000 regarding gender, age, family status, socio-economic position and psychosocial and physical work environment factors. The participants were followed for 18?months in order to assess their incidence of long-term sickness absence exceeding 8 consecutive weeks.
Results
298 workers (5.9%) received sickness absence compensation for 8?weeks or more. Women had an excess risk of 37% compared to men, when adjusting for age, family status and socio-economic position. Physical work environment exposures could not explain this difference, whereas differences in psychosocial work environment exposures explained 32% of the differences in risk of long-term sickness absence between men and women, causing the effect of gender to become statistically insignificant. The combined effect of physical and psychosocial factors was similar, explaining 30% of the gender difference.
Conclusion
Differences in psychosocial work environments in terms of emotional demands, reward at work, management quality and role conflicts, explained roughly 30% of women's excess long-term sickness absence risk. Assuming women and men had identical working conditions would leave the larger part of the gender difference in long-term sickness absence from work unexplained."

"Objective The aim of this study was to examine whether shared and open-plan offices are associated with more days of sickness absence than cellular offices. Methods The analysis was based on a national survey of Danish inhabitants between 18–59 years of age (response rate 62%), and the study population consisted of the 2403 employees that reported working in offices. The different types of offices were characterized according to self-reported number of occupants in the space. The log-linear Poisson model was used to model the number of self-reported sickness absence days depending on the type of office; the analysis was adjusted for age, gender, socioeconomic status, body mass index, alcohol consumption, smoking habits, and physical activity during leisure time. Results Sickness absence was significantly related to having a greater number of occupants in the office (P<0.001) when adjusting for confounders. Compared to cellular offices, occupants in 2-person offices had 50% more days of sickness absence [rate ratio (RR) 1.50, 95% confidence interval (95% CI) 1.13–1.98], occupants in 3–6-person offices had 36% more days of sickness absence (RR 1.36, 95% CI 1.08–1.73), and occupants in open-plan offices (>6 persons) had 62% more days of sickness absence (RR 1.62, 95% CI 1.30–2.02). Conclusion Occupants sharing an office and occupants in open-plan offices (>6 occupants) had significantly more days of sickness absence than occupants in cellular offices."