Ola Sjöberg

Purpose: This study aims to analyze how organizational policies influence emotional demands and work intensity experienced by workers in interactive service roles. Design/methodology/approach: Using establishment- and individual-level data from 31 European countries, this study assesses the impact of organizational policies on job demands. Quantitative analysis evaluates the effectiveness of organizational policies in managing job demands, highlighting the unique challenges posed by client-driven work environments. Findings: While organizational policies help reduce emotional demands in service-oriented sectors, they are less successful in managing work intensity. This discrepancy stems largely from the external nature of client-driven pressures, which are more difficult to manage through internal organizational measures. The findings highlight the need for innovative approaches to mitigate work intensity in service work. Originality/value: By integrating organizational- and individual-level data, this study provides new insights into how organizations manage emotional demands and work intensity in interactive service work. It emphasizes the challenges of regulating client-driven demands, offering important implications for both policy and organizational practice.

Aims: This study aimed to analyse the effect of work-retirement transitions on post-retirement mental health in individuals with different working conditions in late working life. The focus was on transitions that involve the use of social protection schemes to bridge the gap between the exit from work and retirement, and the extent to which the generosity of such schemes is related to mental health after retirement. Methods: Individual-level panel data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe for 11 European countries were analysed using structural equation models. A total of 1642 individuals who worked in 2004 or 2007 and who retired in 2013 or 2015 were included in the analyses. The outcome measure was mental health as measured by the EURO-D scale. Results: Respondents with a ‘high strain’ and ‘passive’ work situation have a significantly higher likelihood of using social protection schemes, such as early retirement, sickness, disability and invalidity schemes before retirement. The generosity of such schemes has a significant positive relation to post-retirement mental health. Conclusions: This study shows that the generosity of early exit pathways is important for post-retirement mental health, especially for individuals with adverse working conditions at the end of their working lives.

Why some employees might thrive on job insecurity: Human values as a moderating factor in the job insecurity - wellbeing relationship

This article analyses the relationship between employee collective voice, measured by union density and institutionalized forms of employee representation at enterprise level, and short-term sickness absence rates in 24 European countries over the period 1996–2010. It relies on individual-level data on sickness absence from the European Labour Force Survey combined with country-level data on employee collective voice. There is a small but significant and non-trivial, negative relationship between employee collective voice and short-term sickness absence. Regression analysis suggests that if union density had remained at the 1996 level, short-term sickness absence would have been, on average, 2.5 hours lower per year than in 2010.

Aim: The purpose of this study is to discuss and empirically contrast different conceptualizations and operationalizations of social policies in analysing health and educational differences in health cross-nationally. Methods: Country-level institutional and expenditure data on unemployment benefit schemes and individual-level data from the EU-SILC for 23 countries were used to analyse the association between unemployment benefits and self-assessed health for individuals with different educational attainment. Results: The analyses indicate that higher coverage rate (i.e. the proportion of the relevant population eligible for benefits) is associated with better self-related health among both low- and high-educated individuals, but is not linked to smaller educational differences in health. In contrast, replacement rate (i.e. the amount of benefits received) in isolation is not related to self-assessed health. However, in countries where coverage rates are high, higher replacement rates are associated with better health among both low- and high-educated individuals and smaller educational differences in health. Conclusions: Decomposing unemployment benefit programmes into two main dimensions – the proportion in the labour force covered by such programmes and the replacement rate received in case of unemployment – may present further insights into institutional mechanisms linking macro-level social policies to individual-level health outcomes.

Social security schemes can reduce poverty risk and increase resources available for individuals and families, and these schemes may therefore have an important role to play in population health in both high- and middle-income countries. This article analyses the linkage between effective coverage of old-age pension schemes and life expectancy in a sample of 93 high- and middle-income countries at the end of the twenty-first century. The analyses support the notion that social security schemes, and especially programmes with a universal approach, may have positive effects on population health, even after taking into account the effect of levels of economic development, income inequality and essential characteristics of health care systems. This article also demonstrates that there is no evident relationship between levels of economic development and social security legislation: historically, late industrialisers were often first in introducing major social security schemes, and today there is no clear cross-national relationship between levels of economic development and the proportion of the population covered by old-age pension schemes.

This article argues that unemployment benefits are providing a crucial but often overlooked function by reducing the insecurity associated with modern