The Job Demands-Resources Model as Outcome and Antecedent of Sickness Absenteeism

Norway has the highest percent of sickness absenteeism in the world (faktisk.no, 2018) and the associated costs are increasing. The aim of this study is to explore how sickness absenteeism affects the way employees experience two groups of job characteristics, namely job resources and job demands, respectively, and whether it has an effect on their well-being. This study includes a sample of 272 employees. Longitudinal data was collected from the same Norwegian company in 2018 and 2019. The main analysis is conducted by using path analysis and a total of 10 hypotheses are tested. The results indicate that job resources and job demands have an effect on sickness absenteeism through their relationships with exhaustion. Exhaustion has a positive effect on future sickness absenteeism. Job resources buffers the negative impact of job demands on exhaustion, which contributes to a decrease in future sickness absence. Results also shows that an increase in job demands leads to an increase in exhaustion, and in turn sickness absenteeism. The findings offer an expansion of the loss cycle, where burnout together with sickness absenteeism causes resource loss and increase in demands, which then affects future burnout and sickness absenteeism. Results suggests that sickness absenteeism affects future work engagement through its negative relationship with job resources. Together these findings expand the knowledge about reversed causality between the JD-R model and sickness absenteeism. Further findings, limitations and implications are discussed