Physicians´ on-call work has been associated with higher levels of sleeping problems and work-family interference (Heponiemi et al. Although on-call work is relatively common among health care staff, it has received less research attention than shift work and long working hours. On-call work refers here to on-call time in the workplace to be ready to take up work right away, and, on-call work at home requiring employees to be in the workplace within a certain amount of time after being called. 2011) and with work-life conflict (Karhula et al. Working on Sundays or weekends has been associated with increased risk of one or more health impairments (Wirtz et al. Fewer studies have focused on working on weekends which, however, is a prevalent working time dimension over half of the European Working Conditions Survey respondents worked at least one Saturday per month and 30% at least one Sunday per month (Eurofound 2017). Shift workers were also more likely to experience work-life conflict than day workers (Eurofound 2017 Karhula et al. A recent review (Kecklund and Axelsson 2016) suggested an increased risk of occupational injuries, type 2 diabetes, weight gain, coronary heart disease, stroke, and some forms of cancer among shift workers. Working on non-day schedule and especially on an irregular shift schedule might adversely affect employee health (Moreno et al. As described below, these dimensions have been suggested to be relevant for employee well-being, although we are not aware of studies that would have analyzed all the dimensions in a single analytic setting.Ītypical timing of work, such as shift work and weekend work, is also common in the health care sector. 2015 Fagan 2001) and demanded working time flexibility, such as on-call work.
time-related) dimensions, including working time duration, timing of work, working time autonomy, work tempo (Adam 1995 Anttila et al. Working time can be characterized by five temporal (i.e. 2019), errors and accidents (Bae and Fabry 2014 Caruso 2014) and may pose a threat to health care quality and performance (Baethge et al. High working time demands, such as high work tempo, night work, and frequent interruptions, are associated with increased risk of fatigue (Härmä et al. Nursing staff, in particular, often face long and/or irregular working hours (Bae and Fabry 2014 Wu et al. A sector in which nonstandard working hours have been common for a long time is the health care sector. 2019), including work outside Monday to Friday and 8:00 to 17:00 or 18:00 schedule (Costa 2016). For example, the expansion of operating hours in the service sector has increased the need for working nonstandard hours (Arlinghaus et al. These results suggest that tight deadlines, performance pressure, weekend work and lack of working time autonomy are linked to impaired well-being among health care employees.Īn increasing number of employees are required to work at diverse and irregular times. The associations between other working time dimensions and well-being were less consistent. We used data on working time dimensions and indicators of well-being (work-life conflict, poor perceived health, sleep difficulties, and fatigue) from a cohort of 5050 hospital employees (Working Hours in the Finnish Public Sector Study 2015, WHFPS) and 1450 employees in the health care sector in Germany responding to the German BAuA-Working Time Survey in 2015 (BAuA-WTS). We studied associations of the five working time dimensions duration (weekly working hours), timing (shift work and weekend work), on-call work, working time autonomy, and work tempo (deadline and performance pressure) with well-being among health care employees in Finland and Germany. Health care professionals often face irregular working hours and high work pace.