“It’s still a great adventure” – exploring offshore employees’ working conditions in a qualitative study

BACKGROUND: Despite the particular demands inherent to offshore work, little is known about the working conditions of employees in the German offshore wind industry. To date, neither offshore employees’ job demands and resources, nor their needs for improving the working conditions have been explored. Therefore, the aim of this study was to conduct a qualitative analysis to gain further insight into these topics. METHODS: Forty-two semi-structured telephone interviews with German offshore employees (n = 21) and offshore experts (n = 21) were conducted. Employees and experts were interviewed with regard to their perceptions of their working conditions offshore. In addition, employees were asked to identify areas with potential need for improvement. The interviews were analysed in a deductive-inductive process according to Mayring’s qualitative content analysis. RESULTS: Employees and experts reported various demands of offshore work, including challenging physical labour, long shifts, inactive waiting times, and recurrent absences from home. In contrast, the high personal meaning of the work, regular work schedule (14 days offshore, 14 days onshore), and strong comradeship were highlighted as job resources. Interviewees’ working conditions varied considerably, e.g. regarding their work tasks and accommodations. Most of the job demands were perceived in terms of the work organization and living conditions offshore. Likewise, employees expressed the majority of needs for improvement in these areas. CONCLUSIONS: Our study offers important insight into the working conditions of employees in the German offshore wind industry. The results can provide a basis for further quantitative research in order to generalize the findings. Moreover, they can be utilized to develop needs-based interventions to improve the working conditions offshore. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12995-017-0179-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.