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Fatigue in ferry shipping employees: the role of work-family conflict and supervisor support

BACKGROUND: Fatigue is a concern in ferry shipping as it has a negative impact on crew members health and plays a major role in marine incidents and accidents. Research within land-based occupational settings has found that work-family conflict is an important risk factor for fatigue and that suppor...

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Autores principales: Dohrmann, Solveig Boeggild, Herttua, Kimmo, Leppin, Anja
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6918644/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31847825
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-7954-z
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author Dohrmann, Solveig Boeggild
Herttua, Kimmo
Leppin, Anja
author_facet Dohrmann, Solveig Boeggild
Herttua, Kimmo
Leppin, Anja
author_sort Dohrmann, Solveig Boeggild
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Fatigue is a concern in ferry shipping as it has a negative impact on crew members health and plays a major role in marine incidents and accidents. Research within land-based occupational settings has found that work-family conflict is an important risk factor for fatigue and that support from leaders constitutes a possible resource with the potential to buffer a negative impact from work-family conflict. Though, the working conditions of ferry shipping are likely to interfere with employee’s family life those two factors have received little attention in research on seafarers’ health. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the direct associations between work-family conflict as well as leaders’ support with fatigue in employees of the Danish ferry shipping industry. Further, the study aimed at testing whether support could buffer potential detrimental associations between work-family conflict and fatigue. METHODS: The study design was cross-sectional, and 193 respondents answered to a self-administered questionnaire. Fatigue was measured with the Swedish Occupational Fatigue Inventory. Perceived work-family conflict and perceived supervisor support were assessed with two subscales from the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire. The association of potential risk factors with fatigue was determined using hierarchical multiple linear regression analyses. RESULTS: After controlling for confounding, work-family conflict was found to be positively associated with four of the five subdimensions of fatigue; lack of energy, physical discomfort, lack of motivation and sleepiness, while more support from supervisors was related to less lack of energy, physical exhaustion and lack of motivation. Further, supervisor support was found to moderate the effect from work-family conflict on the physical subdimensions of fatigue. CONCLUSION: Although restricted by its cross-sectional design and a limited sample, this study provides support for the independent relevance of work family conflict and support from nearest superior for employee fatigue in ferry shipping. Further, there was evidence for a moderating role of such support on the negative impact of work-family conflict on the physical aspects of fatigue. Shipping companies may consider commencing initiatives which reduce conflicts between family life and work obligations, and that leader support may be a relevant component in such initiatives.
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spelling pubmed-69186442019-12-20 Fatigue in ferry shipping employees: the role of work-family conflict and supervisor support Dohrmann, Solveig Boeggild Herttua, Kimmo Leppin, Anja BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: Fatigue is a concern in ferry shipping as it has a negative impact on crew members health and plays a major role in marine incidents and accidents. Research within land-based occupational settings has found that work-family conflict is an important risk factor for fatigue and that support from leaders constitutes a possible resource with the potential to buffer a negative impact from work-family conflict. Though, the working conditions of ferry shipping are likely to interfere with employee’s family life those two factors have received little attention in research on seafarers’ health. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the direct associations between work-family conflict as well as leaders’ support with fatigue in employees of the Danish ferry shipping industry. Further, the study aimed at testing whether support could buffer potential detrimental associations between work-family conflict and fatigue. METHODS: The study design was cross-sectional, and 193 respondents answered to a self-administered questionnaire. Fatigue was measured with the Swedish Occupational Fatigue Inventory. Perceived work-family conflict and perceived supervisor support were assessed with two subscales from the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire. The association of potential risk factors with fatigue was determined using hierarchical multiple linear regression analyses. RESULTS: After controlling for confounding, work-family conflict was found to be positively associated with four of the five subdimensions of fatigue; lack of energy, physical discomfort, lack of motivation and sleepiness, while more support from supervisors was related to less lack of energy, physical exhaustion and lack of motivation. Further, supervisor support was found to moderate the effect from work-family conflict on the physical subdimensions of fatigue. CONCLUSION: Although restricted by its cross-sectional design and a limited sample, this study provides support for the independent relevance of work family conflict and support from nearest superior for employee fatigue in ferry shipping. Further, there was evidence for a moderating role of such support on the negative impact of work-family conflict on the physical aspects of fatigue. Shipping companies may consider commencing initiatives which reduce conflicts between family life and work obligations, and that leader support may be a relevant component in such initiatives. BioMed Central 2019-12-17 /pmc/articles/PMC6918644/ /pubmed/31847825 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-7954-z Text en © The Author(s). 2019 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Dohrmann, Solveig Boeggild
Herttua, Kimmo
Leppin, Anja
Fatigue in ferry shipping employees: the role of work-family conflict and supervisor support
title Fatigue in ferry shipping employees: the role of work-family conflict and supervisor support
title_full Fatigue in ferry shipping employees: the role of work-family conflict and supervisor support
title_fullStr Fatigue in ferry shipping employees: the role of work-family conflict and supervisor support
title_full_unstemmed Fatigue in ferry shipping employees: the role of work-family conflict and supervisor support
title_short Fatigue in ferry shipping employees: the role of work-family conflict and supervisor support
title_sort fatigue in ferry shipping employees: the role of work-family conflict and supervisor support
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6918644/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31847825
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-7954-z
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