Combining high labour intensity, physical and
mental strain, some organisational changes result in increased occupational
risks. Matching the Hygie administrative database on sickness absence and
injury leave of the French population working in the private sector and the
survey on organisational change and computerisation (COI survey), our goal is
to evaluate the impact of organisational changes implemented by companies on long
term absence. We develop a difference in difference approach where we compare
long term absence of employees before and after changes that have been
implemented in their companies with a control group of employees in inert
firms. As changes develop over time, we implement our difference in difference
approach using two time windows: a three years' time period during which
changes took place and a three years' time period after changes took place. We
address the issue of self-selection of employees within changing firms by
applying a matching method taking into account the labour market and health
history of individuals. We capture organisational change by following up the
implementation of new ICT and managerial tools and identify three different
treatments: the employee's company has (1) implemented ICT changes only, (2)
managerial changes only, (3) both ICT and managerial changes. We run
regressions on the whole population and breaking it up by gender. We find in
all regressions the same core results: changes in one dimension only reduce
long term sickness absence when joint changes in ICT and management tools
increase occupational risks. There are however gendered differences in the
timing and strength of impacts as women are mainly impacted during the period
when changes are implemented and impacts are stronger while men are impacted
after the period of change. There are also gendered differences in the forms of
change that reduce long term absence: women are protected by managerial changes
only and men by ICT changes only except when men have more seniority in the
company. These results point to the need to better understand the gendered
construction of health behaviours as well as that of technology and managerial
tools in devising occupational safety and health policies in contexts of
organisational change.