The Time-Varying Effect of Participatory Shift Scheduling on Working Hour Characteristics and Sickness Absence: Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment in Hospitals

Participatory shift scheduling for irregular working hours can influence shift schedules and sickness absence. We investigated the effects of using participatory shift scheduling and shift schedule evaluation tools on working hour characteristics and sickness absence. We utilized a panel data for 2015-2019 with 16,557 hospital employees (6143 in the intervention and 10,345 in the control group). Difference-in-differences regression with ward-level clustered standard errors was used to estimate the average treatment effect on the treated coefficients relative to timing of the intervention with 95% confidence intervals (CI). Using participatory scheduling tool increased long working hours and weekend work and had delayed effects on the short (1-3 days) sickness absences. Increased effects were observed: 0.2 [95% CI 0.0-0.4] days for the second, and 0.8 [95% CI 0.5-1.0] for the third year after the onset of intervention. An average increase of 0.5 [95% CI 0.1-0.9] episodes on all sickness absence episodes was observed for the third year. Using the shift schedule evaluation tool with the participatory shift scheduling tool attenuated the adverse effects. To conclude, participatory shift scheduling increased some potentially harmful working hour characteristics but its effects on sickness absence were negligible, and further attenuated by using the shift schedule evaluation tool.