Equal health at work? Protocol for an observational study of work organisation, workload and musculoskeletal complaints among women and men in grocery retail

Protocol for an observational study of working conditions and musculoskeletal health in Swedish online retail warehousing from the perspective of sex/gender and place of birth

European and International sustainable development agendas aim to reduce inequalities in working conditions and work-related health, yet disparate occupational health outcomes are evident between both men and women and domestic- and foreign-born workers. In Sweden, major growth in online retail warehousing has increased occupational opportunities for foreign-born workers. The rapid change has left research lagging on working conditions, i.e., employment conditions, facility design, work organisation, physical and psychosocial work environment conditions, and their effects on worker health. Further, no known studies have considered patterns of inequality related to these factors. The overall aim of this study is to describe working conditions and musculoskeletal health in online retail warehousing, determine the extent to which differences exist related to sex/gender and place of birth (as a proxy for race/ethnicity), and examine factors at the organisational and individual levels to understand why any differences exist. Three online retail warehouses, each employing 50-150 operations workers performing receiving, order picking, order packing and dispatching tasks will be recruited. Warehouses will, to the extent possible, differ in their extent of digital technology use. Employment conditions, facility design (including digital tool use), work organisation, physical and psychosocial work environment conditions and worker health will be assessed by survey, interview and technical measurements. Analysis of quantitative data stratified by sex and place of birth will consider the extent to which inequalities exist. Focus group interviews with operations employees and in-depth interviews with managers, union and health and safety representatives will be conducted to assess how employee working conditions and musculoskeletal health are related to inequality regimes of sex/gender and/or race/ethnicity in organisational processes and practices in online retail warehousing. The study is pre-registered with the Open Science Framework. This study will describe working conditions and health in online retail warehouse workers and consider the extent to which patterns of inequality exist based on sex/gender and place of birth.

Assessing the efficacy of a job rotation for improving occupational physical and psychosocial work environment, musculoskeletal health, social equality, production quality and resilience at a commercial laundromat: protocol for a longitudinal case study

INTRODUCTION

Job rotation is a work organisation strategy used to reduce work-related exposures and musculoskeletal complaints, yet evidence for the efficacy of the approach is weak. Mismatch between job rotation and company needs, lack of full implementation, lack of exposure variation in included tasks and failure to assess variation may underlie inconclusive research findings to date. The study aims to develop a job rotation with company stakeholders, perform a process evaluation of the implementation, and determine the extent to which the intervention improves the physical and psychosocial work environment, indicators of health, gender and social equality among workers and production quality and resilience.

METHODS AND ANALYSIS

Approximately 60 production workers at a Swedish commercial laundromat will be recruited. Physical and psychosocial work environment conditions, health, productivity and gender and social equality will be assessed pre and post intervention, using surveys, accelerometers, heart rate, electromyography and focus groups. A task-based exposure matrix will be constructed, and exposure variation estimated at the level of the individual worker pre and post intervention. An implementation process evaluation will be conducted. Job rotation efficacy will be assessed in terms of improvement in work environment conditions, health, gender and social inequality, and production quality and resilience. This study will provide novel information on the effects of the job rotation on physical and psychosocial work environment conditions, production quality and rate, health and gender and social inequality among blue-collar workers in a highly multicultural workplace.

ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION

The study received approval from the Swedish Ethical Review Authority (reference number 2019-00228). The results of the project will be shared directly with the employees, managers and union representatives from the participating company, other relevant labour market stakeholders and with researchers at national and international conferences and via scientific publication.

TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER

The study is preregistered with the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/zmdc8/).

Biomechanical Assessments of the Upper Limb for Determining Fatigue, Strain and Effort from the Laboratory to the Industrial Working Place: A Systematic Review

Recent human-centered developments in the industrial field (Industry 5.0) lead companies and stakeholders to ensure the wellbeing of their workers with assessments of upper limb performance in the workplace, with the aim of reducing work-related diseases and improving awareness of the physical status of workers, by assessing motor performance, fatigue, strain and effort. Such approaches are usually developed in laboratories and only at times they are translated to on-field applications; few studies summarized common practices for the assessments. Therefore, our aim is to review the current state-of-the-art approaches used for the assessment of fatigue, strain and effort in working scenarios and to analyze in detail the differences between studies that take place in the laboratory and in the workplace, in order to give insights on future trends and directions. A systematic review of the studies aimed at evaluating the motor performance, fatigue, strain and effort of the upper limb targeting working scenarios is presented. A total of 1375 articles were found in scientific databases and 288 were analyzed. About half of the scientific articles are focused on laboratory pilot studies investigating effort and fatigue in laboratories, while the other half are set in working places. Our results showed that assessing upper limb biomechanics is quite common in the field, but it is mostly performed with instrumental assessments in laboratory studies, while questionnaires and scales are preferred in working places. Future directions may be oriented towards multi-domain approaches able to exploit the potential of combined analyses, exploitation of instrumental approaches in workplace, targeting a wider range of people and implementing more structured trials to translate pilot studies to real practice.

Overview of the “Gender & Work” track at the IEA 2021 congress

BACKGROUND: The International Ergonomics Association (IEA) is an international federation of associations created in 1959, whose mission is to extend the scope of ergonomics research and intervention to all spheres of society in order to improve human well-being. OBJECTIVE: This article presents an overview of the main research papers that were presented at the 21st Triennial IEA 2021 Conference. METHOD: A total of 23 talks, from nine countries, were presented over four sessions. These papers were summarized based on reading the abstracts and taking notes at the time of the oral presentation. RESULTS: The themes of these sessions were: 1) Knowledge Transfer, Gender and Ergonomics 2) Approaching Ergonomic Interventions with a Sex/Gender Lens: Designing Training for Ergonomists 3) Ergonomic Studies of Atypical Work and Vulnerable Population through a Sex/Gender Lens: Toward Better Understanding of Context and Risks, for Better Prevention and 4) Gender and Occupational Risks (Part 1: Exposure and Risk Perception; Part 2: Strategies to Manage Risk). CONCLUSION: Ergonomists are beginning to understand that they have the qualifications and legitimacy to play a role in reducing workplace health inequities and helping to make workplaces inclusive and rich of all the workers’ diversity. The four sessions of the Gender and Ergonomics TC have moved ergonomics practice a step closer to that goal.

Working hour characteristics in the Finnish retail sector - a registry study on objective working hour data

Earlier research is lacking on the prevalence and nature of objective working hour characteristics in the retail sector. We developed a codification in the retail sector and investigated differences in objective working hour characteristics by part-time work, sex and age. The payroll-based registry data of objective working hours consisted >12,000 employees of the retail sector in Finland for 2018-2020. Descriptive statistics for means, standard deviations (SD) and range of annual working hour characteristics were calculated, the differences in means were tested, partially based on the protocol established for health care sector. The final sample had 60-63% part-time employees and 23% men. Morning shifts were more frequent (48-51%) among full-time employees compared to 27-30% of the part-time employees. Evening shifts, 43-46%, were frequent among part-time employees vs. 26% in full-time. No sex differences were detected, and age group differences only among part-time employees. To conclude, the codification for registry-based working hour data enables us to identify individual differences in working hour characteristics. The working hour characteristics differed between part-time and full-time employees, not between sexes, whereas age differences were minor and among part-time employees. The codification could be used in studies of the retail sector in association with health and wellbeing.