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Norwegian

Striving for excellence, learning to cope? -Employer strategies for anaging sick leaves and employee health over the decades

Number1190
Project managerBernt Bratsberg
ClientNFR via ISF
Client project no.227117
ParticipantsBernt Bratsberg
Ragnhild Camilla Schreiner
Period2013 - 2016 (ended)

Project description

The project analyses how employers' strategies for managing sick leaves and employee health have changed over the decades, and how these changes have affected workers' sick leaves and withdrawal from the labour market. Such changes may be essential to identify causal impacts of employer strategies on workers' behaviour. Furthermore, when variation in public schemes and legislation is limited, private management strategies may provide the necessary variation for identification. Finally, comparison between Norway and the UK allows us to exploit differences in welfare regimes, competitive environments and economic situation. Our project explicitly analyses: i)changing sick pay schemes and work environment, ii) the potential conflict between graded (pal1ial) sick leaves and work structure, iii) the early retirement legislation and the relation to sick leaves and disability resiliency, iv)strategies for managing workers who are long-term ill or have permanently impaired health, v) the sorting of workers on health and job polarization, and fmally, vi) how social interaction at the workplace and in the neighborhood changes over time, with respect to sickness absence and withdrawal from work. We exploit a new detailed questionnaire survey; the Norwegian Workplace Employment Relations Survey 2012 (NWERS2012), which when linked with two employer previous surveys(l997,2003) and added register data on individuals and organizations will give us panel information on establishments and workers over 20 years. Furthermore, we exploit the UK WERS2011 and the previous WERS-studies (1998 and 2004) containing similar questionnaire information on workplaces, as well as questionnaire information on workers. The advantage of the latter is that it can be linked to the workplace data, thus linking worker subjective wellbeing indicators to absence rates in the previous year, and to workplace policies and practices.

Publications

Scientific Journal

Author(s):Title:Year:Reference:Link:
Bratsberg, Bernt, Oddbjørn Raaum and Knut RøedJob Loss and Immigrant Labor Market Performance2018Economica vol 85(337), 124-151[PDF] [DOI]
Bratsberg, Bernt and Ole RøgebergChildhood socioeconomic status does not explain the IQ-mortality gradient2017Intelligence [PDF] [DOI]

Other publications

Author(s):Title:Year:Reference:Link:
Bratsberg, B., O. Raaum, K. RøedImmigrant Responses to Social Insurance Generosity2018IZA Discussion Paper No. 11482[PDF]