Promoting Employees’ Recovery During Shift Work: Protocol for a Workplace Intervention Study (Preprint)

Abstract

UNSTRUCTURED Background: Shift work can be demanding due to disturbances of biological and social circadian rhythms. This can cause short-term negative effects for employees, such as increased levels of fatigue and reduced alertness. A potential way to counteract these negative effects is to enhance employees’ recovery from work during working hours. The aim of this study is to develop and implement an intervention that focuses on promoting ‘on-job’ recovery of shift workers. Methods: The study takes place at a multinational company within the steel industry. For each of two departmental units of shift workers, an intervention will be developed and implemented through an iterative process of user-centered design and evaluation. This approach consists of various sessions in which employees and a project group (i.e., researchers, line managers, human resources (HR) managers, occupational health experts) provide input on intervention content and implementation. Intervention effects will be evaluated by means of pre-test and post-test online surveys. Digital Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) will be used to gain insight in the link between the intervention and daily within-person processes. The intervention process and participants perception of the interventions will be assessed through a process evaluation. Intervention results will be analyzed performing mixed model repeated measures analyses (MANOVA) and multilevel analyses. Discussion: A strength of this study design is the participatory action approach (PAR) to enhance commitment of all stakeholders, intervention adherence and compliance. Moreover, due to target group participation in development and implementation of the interventions, the proposed impact will be more likely to occur. In addition, short-term as well as longer-term effects will be evaluated. Finally, this study uses a unique combination of quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods. The impossibility to randomly assign participants to an intervention or control group is a limitation of this study. Furthermore, the follow-up period (6 months) might be too short to establish health-related effects. Lastly, the results of this study might be specific to the department, organization, or sector, which limits generalizability. However, as workplace intervention research for shift workers is scarce, this study might serve as a starting point for future research on shift work interventions.