Improving subjective health and reducing absenteeism in a natural work life-intervention

A natural one-year work-life intervention to improve occupational health an d reduce absenteeism was designed as a field experiment. The intervention a llowed the employees in the health care sector of a municipality to take up to five days of self-administered sick leave with full financial compensat ion up to four times a year. 165 employees in the intervention group and 10 0 employees in the control group filled our a questionnaire before and afte r the intervention. The result showed no evidence of misuse of this sick-le ave option and some positive subjective health effects were found among tho se who used the option. Slight improvements were found in musculoskeletal p roblems and for cold/influenza. There were no effects on overall absenteeis m, The question of the impact of local cultures on interventions to improve occupational health is also discussed.