The Impact of Physical Work Demands on Need for Recovery, Employment Status, Retirement Intentions, and Ability to Extend Working Careers: A Longitudinal Study Among Older Workers.

OBJECTIVE: Prospectively investigating whether different approaches of physical work demands are associated with need for recovery (NFR), employment status, retirement intentions, and ability to prolong working life among older employees from the industry and health care sector. METHODS: A subsample from the Maastricht Cohort Study was studied (n = 1126). Poisson, Cox, and logistic regression analyses were performed to investigate outcomes. RESULTS: Perceiving physical work demands as strenuous was associated with higher NFR. Continuous physical strain was associated with being out of employment 4 years later. Employees with the highest amount of physical work demands perceived they were less able to prolong working life, although no significant associations between physical work demands and retirement intentions were found. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, physical work demands were associated with adverse outcomes, with divergent insights for the different approaches of physical work demands.

The ageing shift worker: a prospective cohort study on need for recovery, disability, and retirement intentions.

OBJECTIVES: This study investigates whether different shift work schedules, compared to day work, are associated with need for recovery (NFR), future disability, and retirement intentions for employees employed within different economic sectors over the course of their careers. Shift work exposure duration and the healthy worker effect are also examined. METHODS: Data from the prospective Maastricht Cohort Study was used. Subsamples of industry (N=1877, all men) and healthcare (N=818, 624 women and 194 men) workers were separately investigated. GEE and Cox regression analyses were performed to investigate NFR longitudinally. Future disability was investigated using Cox regression, and retirement intentions were investigated using logistic regression analysis. RESULTS: Three-shift industry workers were at risk of becoming a case of elevated NFR during follow-up, compared to industry day workers. Three- and five-shift industry workers were at risk for future disability. In healthcare, irregular shift work was a risk factor for disability among older shift workers. No significant results were found regarding retirement intentions. Findings were probably an underestimation as exposure duration to shift work and the healthy worker effect affected the results. CONCLUSIONS: Shift work was associated with higher levels of NFR and a higher risk of disability. However, shift work is a multifaceted concept as different types of shift work schedules are differently associated with these outcomes. Different shift work types exist and shift work schedules allow for optimization, indicating that measures to prevent adverse outcomes should be tailored for different types of shift work and over the course of the work career.