Characteristics and experiences of off-site on-call work in relation to fatigue and sleep

Research on off-site on-call work is scarce and insight into the characteristics and experience of off-site on-call work is limited. This study provides an overview of the characteristics of off-site on-call work and the way in which employees experience their off-site on-call duties. In addition, the relationship was investigated between characteristics and experiences of off-site on-call work on the one hand and fatigue and sleeping problems on the other. Data were collected in 2017 by means of an online questionnaire that was distributed among a large sample of employees from different industries. The final sample consisted of more than 2000 Dutch employees, who were exposed to off-site on-call work in their work. The results show that most employees are regularly to often called during off-site on-call work, and that the majority experiences being on-call quite as unfavorable. Hierarchical regression analyses show that fatigue and sleeping problems are more strongly related to negative experiences of off-site on-call duties than to exposure to objective characteristics of these duties (such as the frequency of off-site on-call work or the number and duration of calls). In summary, this study points to a high prevalence of adverse experiences of off-site on-call work. In line with this, it can be concluded that even off-site on-call work with a low frequency of calls can be a risk factor for fatigue and sleeping problems.