From 12 to 16 November 2018, I went to Finland to work with Kati Karhula from FIOH.
Several goals were followed during the research visit and several activities were undertaken to promote future collaboration between BAuA and FIOH based on the common research interest of working groups at BAuA and FIOH on the topic of working time and health/work-life balance.
First, during a symposium on working time research that was organized by Kati Karhula, I had the possibility to present BAuA in general as well as working time research at BAuA with a focus on working time research that is conducted in our department (e.g., BAuA-Working Time Survey) as well as projects planned for the future. Afterwards, several working time researchers from FIOH presented their research to be discussed among the whole group. Those who could not be there had the possibility to take part via Skype.
Second, Kati Karhula and I organized and submitted a symposium proposal for the 24th International Symposium on Shiftwork and Working Time of the Working Time Society that will take place in the U.S. in September 2019. The title of our proposed symposium session is “Working time characteristics and employee well-being: Findings from representative surveys and objective data” and it includes four presentations from researchers from FIOH and BAuA.
One of the papers to be presented as part of the symposium is a joint publication, which Kati Karhula and I started working on during my visit at FIOH. In this publication we plan to analyze data from German and Finnish employees using the BAuA-Working Time Survey as well as register data and the FPS Survey from employees in Finland. The working title is “The role of the organization of working time and space for employees’ health and work-life balance in the health care sector”. We developed an outline for the paper as well as a strategy for the analyses and the timeline. It is planned to finalize and submit the joint publication to a scientific journal (peer-review) in Winter 2019/2020.
In summary, I believe that my one-week visit to FIOH was successful. And I would like to thank PEROSH for supporting this staff exchange that definitely helped to promote the exchange of BAuA and FIOH on working time research.
