Experience in working shifts: The spouses/partners vision of shift workers and day workers

Abstract

Shift work, especially involving night work, weekends or highly valued periods of family and/or social point of view, may pose disadvantages for workers in various fields: health, organizational, family and social life. Despite the growing interest in this issue, the study of the impacts on workers’ health has been emphasized in comparison to the impacts on social and/or family life. Besides, such study has favored the perspective of workers in face of third-party perspective. Bearing in mind these limitations, a research project was undertaken to evaluate the impact of shift work on family and social life alongside involving 515 participants (403 spouses/partners of shift workers and 112 spouses/partners of day workers). This paper presents and discusses the achieved results upon two open questions about the experience of working in shifts within this research project. Specifically, the answers of 178 spouses/partners of shift workers were compared with the answers of 28 spouses/partners of day workers. The results showed that according to the perspective of their spouses/partners, shift work is perceived as the most prejudicial to workers and their family and/or social life as compared to the conventional work schedule.