Digitalized Work, Health, and Socioeconomic Position
Department of Occupational, Social and Preventive Medicine
Research shows that social inequalities in working conditions can adversely affect health. For example, higher socioeconomic position (SEP) is associated with better self-rated health, while work-related stress is more common among groups with lower SEP. Because pronounced and systematic health inequalities can contribute to long-term unemployment and involuntary early retirement, interest in the social determinants of workplace health is growing.
This project examines whether the potential burden of technostress is unevenly distributed along a social gradient. It evaluates how digitalized work relates to health and work outcomes, and how socioeconomic status shapes these relationships, using a systematic review. From a methodological perspective, the project also analyzes the implications of different ways to operationalize SEP.
Technological restructuring, job insecurity and health
Techno-insecurity, the perceived threat about losing ones job due to technological change, has been hotly debated following dramatic claims of widely discussed research that estimated about half of all jobs to be at risk of being substituted by technologies (Frey & Osborne 2013). A nationally representative survey (“Digitalisierungsmonitor”) indicates that 13% of German workers expected their jobs to be replaced by technology and showed that there is a clear social gradient with 28% of low education expressing this expectation. Importantly, Importantly, job insecurity, whether it is just a perceived or real threat, has a wide range of adverse consequences for health and can pose a threat to health comparable to that of actual unemployment.
However, empirical evidence on perceived job insecurity due to digitalisation and its effects on health is currently scarce. In collaboration with the Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, this project examines whether whether perceived digitalisation and organisational restructuring influence subjective job insecurity as well as the extent to which this impacts health and work outcomes in different socioeconomic groups. The analysis is based on data from the national employment survey (“Erwerbstätigenbefragung”) between 2006 and 2018. Our findings will be developed and published as recommendations for research and policy as to capturing workplace digitalisation in occupational health surveys.
Recommendations for science, politics and organisations as to digitalisation at work
Our research serves to develop recommendations for science, politics and organisations with regard to the interplay of digitization and diversity in the world of work. The goal is the better assessment and healthier design of digitized work in different types of organisations, also taking into account dimensions of diversity. The findings from our institute’s projects on digital work are synthesized in order to develop practice-oriented recommendations. In addition, study findings on the role of socio-economic position and the consideration of social and professional contexts as well as types of digitization will be incorporated into the development of employment surveys.
Publications
Borle P, Reichel K, Niebuhr F, Voelter-Mahlknecht S, How Are Techno-Stressors Associated with Mental Health and Work Outcomes? A Systematic Review of Occupational Exposure to Information and Communication Technologies within the Technostress Model Int J Environ Res Public Health 2021; 17(18)
Borle P, Reichel K, Voelter-Mahlknecht S Is There a Sampling Bias in Research on Work-Related Technostress? A Systematic Review of Occupational Exposure to Technostress and the Role of Socioeconomic Position Int J Environ Res Public Health 2021; 20(18)