Higher risks when working unusual times? A cross-validation of the effects on safety, health, and work-life balance.

Purpose: Replication and cross-validation of results on health and safety risks of work at unusual times.

Methods: Data from two independent surveys (European Working Conditions Surveys 2005 and 2010; EU 2005: n = 23,934 and EU 2010: n = 35,187) were used to examine the relative risks of working at unusual times (evenings, Saturdays, and Sundays) on work-life balance, work-related health complaints, and occupational accidents using logistic regression while controlling for potential confounders such as demographics, work load, and shift work.

Results: For the EU 2005 survey, evening work was significantly associated with an increased risk of poor work-life balance (OR 1.

The validity of the risk index for comparing the accident risk associated with different work schedules.

Although it is known that there is an association between working hours and occupational accidents, there are only few tools which allow for an assessment of the risk associated with different working time arrangements, none of them validated yet by independent samples. Promising tools like the risk index (RI), assessed via the fatigue and risk index calculator, thus need to be validated. Since analyses on the validity of the RI based on individual data found only moderate associations between the RI and the actual accident risk, the question arises, whether a validation based on grouped data yields more promising results.

The impact of organizational changes on work stress, sleep, recovery and health.

The study objective was to investigate the impact of different kinds of organizational changes, as well as anticipation of such changes, on work-related stress, sleep, recovery and health. It was hypothesized that impaired sleep and recovery increase the adverse health consequences of organizational changes. The data consisted of cross sectional questionnaire data from a random sample of 1,523 employees in the Swedish police force.

The validity of the fatigue and risk index for predicting impairments of health and safety under different shift schedules in the context of risk assessments.

In Germany, risk assessment of the working time arrangement is legally required, and within this context the authors assessed the usefulness of the fatigue and risk index (FRI) to predict any detrimental effects to health and safety. This assessment was made using data from two different surveys. Each contained records of working hours over a 4-wk period plus information on occupational accidents and health complaints.