Do workplace health-promotion interventions targeting employees with poor health reduce sick-leave probability and disability rates?

Aims: This study aimed to investigate whether introducing workplace health-promotion interventions targeting employees with health problems or reduced work ability affected overall sick leave and disability risk.

Methods: The study population comprised data from an establishment survey from 2010 identifying who had introduced workplace health promotion (the intervention) linked to register data on all employees and their sickness absence and disability pension uptake from 2000 through 2010.

Results: Interventions had moderate effects due to varying efficacy in different parts of the labour market.

Do work-place initiated measures reduce sickness absence? Preventive measures and sickness absence among older workers in Norway.

Aims: The article examines whether preventive measures and work adjustments at the establishment level affects sickness absence among workers aged 50 years and older.

Methods: We combine survey data from a representative sample of 713 Norwegian companies, mapping the prevalence of preventive health measures in the work place in 2005, with register data on sickness absence and demographic variables for workers aged 50 years or older in 2001 and 2007. By means of a difference-in-differences approach, we compare changes and differences in the likelihood of sickness absence among the sample group, with and without the various measures/ instruments in 2005 respectively.