Happy employees are less likely to be sick - which is important to employees at work

Good working atmosphere and meaningful work have a positive effect on health

A good working atmosphere and meaningful work obviously have a positive effect on health. This is the conclusion of the current "Absentee Report" of the AOK. According to the health insurance company, it is important for almost all employees to feel comfortable in the workplace. Good cooperation with colleagues and the loyalty of the company to the employees are also seen by most people as significant.

Work can make you sick

Stress in the workplace can make you sick. Because constant pressure, excessive demands and conflicts with supervisors or colleagues can lead to mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety or sleeping disorders. This is also shown by the days of absence due to mental illness, which has been increasing for years. Many employees also have to report sick over and over again because of physical discomfort. The current "AOK Absentee Report" now shows what can help to make employees less ill: a good working atmosphere and meaningful work.

Stress in the job can make you sick. By contrast, a good working atmosphere and meaningful work can have a positive effect on your health. This is shown by the current absenteeism report of the AOK. (Image: Rido / fotolia.com)

Safe and healthy working conditions

If employees experience their work as meaningful, it has a positive effect on their health:

They are less likely to be absent from the workplace, have significantly fewer work-related health problems and, in the event of illness, are more likely to take the medically prescribed sick leave.

The Scientific Institute of the AOK (WIdO) comes to this conclusion in a representative survey of more than 2,000 workers, which was published exclusively in the Absenteeism Report 2018 with the focus on "Experiencing meaning - work and health".

For this, the institute also asked what is especially important to people in the workplace.

"Safe and healthy working conditions and the feeling that they are doing something meaningful are much more important to employees than a high income," said Helmut Schröder, Deputy Managing Director of the WIdO and co-publisher of the Absentee Report, in a statement.

What matters most to employees in the workplace

According to the representative survey of the WIdO, which interviewed 2,030 people aged between 16 and 65, 98.4 percent of respondents in the job are most likely to feel comfortable in the workplace.

A good working relationship with the colleagues (97.9 percent), a good working atmosphere (96.8 percent), the loyalty of the company to the employees (96.8 percent) and a good relationship with the superior (92.4 percent) they feel also significant.

"For the Sinner life most of the employees are especially interested in personally and socially motivated aspects of their work," said Schröder. "Unfortunately, desire and reality often do not match."

Only 69.3 percent of respondents say that their employer is loyal to them. And only 78 percent of the employees experience a positive working atmosphere.

Employees were missing an average of 12 days a year

Respondents said they had missed an average of 12.1 days in the workplace last year due to illness.

If one's own claim to the meaning of life at work and the reality in the employee's perception fit well with one another, they only report 9.4 days of absence due to illness.

If desire and reality are very different, however, the times are more than twice as high with 19.6 days lost.

According to the information, this relationship is also evident in job-related physical and mental complaints.

On average, 38.1 percent of respondents reported joint and back pain and 35.9 percent reported exhaustion.

Promote employee health

However, if employees feel that their work is meaningful, the listed symptoms are mentioned less frequently (back and joint pain: 34 percent, exhaustion: 33.2 percent)..

If this is not the case, 54.1 percent reported back and joint pain and 56.5 percent reported fatigue.

According to the WIdO survey, there are also differences in the workplace despite illness, the so-called presentativeness: more than one in five respondents (21.1 percent) had gone to work ill in the past year, contrary to the doctor's advice.

However, those who find their work meaningful are less frequently affected (18.5 percent) than employees who do not (24.8 percent).

"If companies want to promote the health of their employees and remain attractive as an employer, they should convey more loyalty to their employees and purposefully promote trusting cooperation across hierarchical levels," says Schröder.

Sick leave remained constant in recent years

The Absenteeism Report 2018 provides detailed disability analysis based on data from 13.2 million AOK insured workers employed in more than 1.6 million businesses in 2017.

According to these data, the sick-leave rate among the employed members of the AOK 2017 remained constant at 5.3 percent, as in the previous two years. In this case, the sick leave refers to the share of incapacity days incurred in the entire year 2017 in the calendar year.

Thus, on average every AOK-insured employee has missed 19.4 days on the basis of a medical certificate of incapacity for work.

The most common were respiratory diseases (49.9 cases per 100 AOK members) and musculoskeletal disorders (34.1 cases per 100 AOK members). Mental illnesses occurred in 11.2 cases per 100 AOK members.

However, the number of days lost due to mental illness has risen steadily in the last ten years, and by 67.5 percent between 2007 and 2017.

In addition, these diseases lead to long downtime. With 26.1 days per case, in 2017 they lasted more than twice as long as the average of 11.8 days per case. (Ad)