Trends and associations of remote workdays and short sickness absences among Finnish knowledge workers from 2019 to 2023.

Aims: The aim was to investigate short (1-3 days) sickness absence (SA) and remote work in 2019-2023 among a cohort of Finnish knowledge workers. A specific aim was to investigate the role of working hours and the associations between remote work and SA and if the associations would differ before, during, or after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: Employer-owned register data of 5535 knowledge workers for working hours (daily and weekly working hours), remote workdays/week, and short, 1-3 days, SA from 2019 to 2023 were investigated with a fixed-effects Poisson regression analysis for incidence rate ratios (IRRs) with 95% confidence intervals (95%CI).

Results: The overall associations between remote work and short SA indicated that each 1-day increase in remote workdays was associated with higher odds of short SA (IRR 1.27, 95%CI 1.24, 1.30). The comparison across the years 2019-2023 showed varying associations. In the pre-pandemic year, 2019, there was no statistically significant association between remote workdays and short SA. Since 2021, doing no remote work has been associated with a lower likelihood of short SA. Instead, working remotely for 1-2 days or 3-5 days/week was associated with higher likelihood only when compared with no remote work.

Conclusions: Among knowledge workers, remote work seems related to short, 1-3 days of SA only after the COVID-19 pandemic. The possibility of working remotely might be an important factor in mitigating infections, while our results raise the assumption that presenteeism might be prevalent in remote work.