Working Conditions, Absence and Gender - a Multilevel Study

In this paper we use data that combines employment records with employee survey responses to study to what extent psychosocial working conditions, measured at the work group level, relate to individual short-term and long-term sick leave. In order to take interdependencies of workers and work groups into consideration we use multilevel modeling as our modeling strategy. Our results suggest that in order to reduce the number of spells of short-term sick leave (shirking), employers should increase the worker's job autonomy. This is particularly important for male workers. In addition, increasing work group cohesion is important in order to reduce the number of women being on long-term sick leave.