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Working life occupies a considerable part of life for most people and is therefore of great importance to public health. Besides work environment factors, employment conditions and the possibilty to balance work and leisure are of importance to individual health. Working environment conditions and the health of individuals are also important issues for the development and growth of organizations and regions. Health in working life is therefore a special target in several European and Swedish policy documents. In the Europe 2020 strategy it is pointed out that ensuring quality of work and employment is a core element for achieving competitiveness and sustainability. According to the community strategy on health and safety at work, good health at work helps improve public health in general and also the productivity and competitiveness of businesses. In a recent Swedish governmental report addressing a renewed work environment policy it is stated that the positive and health promoting effects of a work environment must be more visible. Furthermore, workplace problems of health and safety exact a high cost for social protection systems and therefore workers need to be provided with suitable working conditions if their general wellbeing is to be enhanced. Working environment and employment relations are also important when discussing social determinants for health and health equity in working life. ; Published: 25 September 2012

The aim of this study is to identify how managers of micro-sized enterprises experience the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on their business operations, work-life balance and well-being. Further, the study aims to make comparisons between managers of micro-sized businesses and managers of small-sized businesses. This mixed-method study is based on qualitative interviews with ten managers of micro-sized enterprises and a questionnaire answered by 95 managers of micro-sized and small-sized enterprises in regions in the north of Sweden. Managers of micro-sized enterprises reported significantly worse scores for mental well-being, job satisfaction and life satisfaction in comparison with managers of small-sized enterprises. Three themes emerged from the qualitative analysis: Changed leadership role, Impact on private life and Impact on well-being. In the interviews, the managers of micro-sized enterprises reported that the pandemic had increased their workload and forced them to mobilise strategies for enterprise survival. This study indicates that managers of micro-sized enterprises had changed their leadership role and increased their workload and number of work tasks, including supporting the employees, developing strategies for business survival and applying for governmental support. However, the managers demonstrated creativity in finding new solutions for their enterprises. ; Småföretag och Covid-19 – ledares lärdomar inför framtida kriser

Background: This presentation focuses on results from studies concerning workplace health and rehabilitation interventions in one Swedish rural municipality including 19 workplaces with a population of 311 individuals. The municipality has implemented a model for human resource accounting, an extensive leader and co-worker development program and specific workplace based health and rehabilitation measures.Methods: The studies compare co-workers and leaders self-ratings of health and psychosocial working conditions, and investigate how workplace health and rehabilitation programs affect these ratings by analysing quantitative results before, during and after carried out interventions. Qualitative data collection consisted of semi-structured interviews with middle managers and an examination of documents reviewing content of the interventions that had been carried out.Findings: Results indicate differences concerning how the leaders and the co-workers judge their health and psychosocial working conditions. When comparing mean changes in scores on indexes by individuals grouped in the high quality workplace-based program group with individuals grouped in the low quality workplace-based program group, there were more positive mean changes for the former group.Discussion: The findings of differences concerning how public sector leaders and co-workers judge their health and psychosocial working conditions give support for different job characteristics for these two categories of employees. The rather strong relationships in the assumed direction between employees' assessment of changes in health, and changes concerning stress and psychosocial working conditions that resulted are in line with other research studies. Comparing workplaces grouped as having high quality workplace-based programs with workplaces with low quality workplace-based programs indicates that workplace-based prevention and rehabilitation programs in public human service organizations using a broad change strategy with high levels of participation from both managers and co-workers, and developed leadership behaviour are more effective in improving employee health and psychosocial working conditions.

Studies have indicated the importance of family life and psychosocial working conditions for mental wellbeing. More recently, studies have highlighted that a good balance between work and family is crucial for good mental wellbeing. However, few studies compare the relative importance of these factors for mental wellbeing. The main aim of this study was to analyse the relative importance of psychosocial working conditions, family conditions and work/family conflict for mental wellbeing. The analyses are based on a Swedish data set, including questions regarding working life, family life and mental wellbeing. A total of 12,461 married/cohabiting individuals employed in Swedish organisations were included in the study. Results show that psychosocial working conditions, family conditions and work/family conflict all were related to mental wellbeing. In the final regression model, the strongest correlation was found between mental wellbeing and the variables work/family conflict, satisfaction with private life and partner relationship, with work/family conflict appearing to be of greatest importance. These findings highlight the necessity of including measurements of work/family conflict when studying the importance of work and family conditions for individual mental wellbeing. For workplace health promotion and improvement, it may be beneficial to consider not only psychosocial working conditions, but also family conditions, and particularly work/life conflict.

Background: European policymakers encourage individuals to become self-employed because it is a way to promote innovation and job creation. It can be assumed that health and well-being among the self-employed and managers in small-scale enterprises are particularly crucial in this enterprise group because the smallness of the enterprise makes its members vulnerable. Earlier studies have indicated that the self-employed have a high working pace and work for long and irregular hours, indicating that it can be difficult to stay at home because of sickness. The purpose of this study is to investigate the occurrence of sickness presenteeism among the self-employed in relation to the organizationally employed and to analyze whether any differences can be explained by higher work demands among the self-employed. Methods: The study is based on the fifth European survey on working conditions (2010) and includes the northwestern European countries in the survey. The questions cover a wide range of topics designed to meet the European Union's political needs. The main variables in this study are sickness presenteeism and several indicators of time demands. Results: The results show that the self-employed report a higher level of sickness presenteeism than the employed: 52.4 versus 43.6%. All indicators of time demands are significantly related to the risk for sickness presenteeism, also when controlling for background characteristics. Conclusion: The results confirm that the level of sickness presenteeism is higher among the self-employed and that high time demands are a major explanation to this.

BACKGROUND: European policymakers encourage individuals to become self-employed because it is a way to promote innovation and job creation. It can be assumed that health and well-being among the self-employed and managers in small-scale enterprises are particularly crucial in this enterprise group because the smallness of the enterprise makes its members vulnerable. Earlier studies have indicated that the self-employed have a high working pace and work for long and irregular hours, indicating that it can be difficult to stay at home because of sickness. The purpose of this study is to investigate the occurrence of sickness presenteeism among the self-employed in relation to the organizationally employed and to analyze whether any differences can be explained by higher work demands among the self-employed. METHODS: The study is based on the fifth European survey on working conditions (2010) and includes the northwestern European countries in the survey. The questions cover a wide range of topics designed to meet the European Union's political needs. The main variables in this study are sickness presenteeism and several indicators of time demands. RESULTS: The results show that the self-employed report a higher level of sickness presenteeism than the employed: 52.4 versus 43.6%. All indicators of time demands are significantly related to the risk for sickness presenteeism, also when controlling for background characteristics. CONCLUSION: The results confirm that the level of sickness presenteeism is higher among the self-employed and that high time demands are a major explanation to this.

In this article, the authors set out to study the time use of men and women in Sweden, comparing self-employed and employed individuals. Previous studies indicate that there are reasons to believe that both gendered time use and mechanisms related to time use might differ between the self-employed and employees. Employing time use data, the aim was to study whether there are differences in gendered time use between self-employed individuals and employees in Sweden, and furthermore, which mechanism relates to gendered time use among self-employed individuals and employees. The results show that self-employed men and women distribute their time in a more gender-traditional manner than employees. In addition, relative resources are found to be an important factor related to gendered time use among the self-employed. For employees, gender relations tend to be a mechanism related to gendered time use. The conclusion is that working conditions are important for gendered time use and should be considered in future studies.

The safety and health of many workers employed in micro-enterprises (with less than 10 em-ployees) is poor, and legal arrangements related to working environments remain a considerable challenge in these enterprises. The aim of this study is to gain a deeper understanding of how Swedish occupational safety and health (OSH) inspectors perceive them selves as inspectors and their role as bureaucratic regulators when meeting micro-enterprises. In the study, 11 Swedish inspectors were interviewed and asked to reflect on their role as inspectors, how they perceive them selves as inspectors and what their role is as bureaucratic regulators when inspecting micro-enterprises. The qualitative content analysis revealed one theme—a balancing act—and three categories: one inspector, many roles; interactions with micro-entrepreneurs; and exercise the profession as an inspector. The results showed that OSHinspectors experience challenges in meeting the requirements of street-level bureaucracy while addressing the needs of micro-enterprises. In conclusion, OSH inspectors need organisational support to develop inspection models and enforcement styles tailored to micro-enterprises, as this could ease their work and contribute to better inspection outcomes. The implications of this study include a need for increased competence about working environment issues in micro-enterprises, development of enforcement styles among the inspectors, emphasis of the importance of specific governmental projects for OSH and development of models in this enterprise group. Additionally, development of micro-enterprise managers' competence and ability to handle issues related to the working environment and health were also important.