Public health staff during the COVID-19 pandemic: a comparison of temporary and permanent staff

The COVID-19 pandemic posed an enormous challenge on the public health workforce, particularly the need for substantial numbers of temporary staff. Temporary staff may experience poorer working conditions compared to permanent staff. This study aimed to investigate differences in job demands and work functioning between temporary and permanent public health staff during the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Netherlands. This cross-sectional study included temporary (N = 194) and permanent (N = 98) public health staff from a municipal health service and an employment agency respectively. The participants completed a questionnaire with items about quantitative, cognitive, emotional demands (Copenhagen PsychoSOcial Questionnaire, COPSOQ) and work functioning (Work Role Functioning Questionnaire, WRFQ). Differences between temporary and permanent staff were investigated with linear regressions. To investigate differences between temporary staff performing testing, vaccination or client services and contact tracing, exploratory descriptive analyses were performed. Compared to permanent staff, temporary staff had better scores on quantitative (-26.51; 95% CI -30.64 to 22.38), cognitive (-24.31; 95% CI -28.86 to -19.76), emotional demands (-11.67; 95% CI -15.82 to -7.53) and work functioning (7.66; 95% CI 4.20 to 11.30). None of the task groups within temporary staff had consistently higher scores. Temporary staff had better scores on job demands and work functioning than permanent staff. The relatively better scores of temporary staff were not expected, but might be explained by a healthy worker effect and they may be less affected by poor working conditions due to short-term exposures. From a public health perspective, it is important to know how temporary staff experience working conditions when the public health workforce suddenly needs to increase. Our study encourages to not only focus on tasks within the public health system but also on working conditions. KEY MESSAGES: • To our knowledge this is the first study that compared the experienced working conditions of temporary and permanent public health staff during COVID-19. • Employing temporary staff appeared an adequate solution to strengthen the public health workforce during a pandemic, according to our result that temporary staff is not affected by working conditions.