Part-time Work and Sickness Absence – an Organization-level Analysis

Abstract

Background Absenteeism is consistently higher in public than in private organizations, and represents great cost for both individuals, organizations, and society. Most research on absenteeism has focused mostly on the individual level, less on whether and eventually how one of all organizations’ basic organization of work – the number of hours worked – affects absence. This study focuses on the relationship between part-time work and sickness absence at the organizational level. Methods The data is a six-year panel for all Norwegian municipalities, linking register data on both part-time employment and sickness absence, while controlling for other relevant organizational and environmental variables like municipal size and economic resources. Data were analyzed using OLS regression with fixed effects for municipality and time. Results The main findings are that the organizations’ use of part-time work is unrelated to sickness absence. Conclusions While concerns have been raised on whether part-employees would be less attached to the organization, leading to higher absenteeism, this study indicates that organizations with extensive use of part-time work do not experience higher levels of absenteeism than those having less extensive use of part-time employees.