Objectives: To evaluate mental health-related outcomes of police officers 5.5 years after implementing a new alternating shift schedule which was supposed to improve their health and work-life balance.
Design: Pre-post study design with a baseline survey at the beginning of the piloting of the new shift schedule in 2015 and another survey 5.5 years later in 2020.
Setting: Police departments of a German metropolitan police force piloting the new shift schedule.
Participants: 116 shift-working police officers out of a population of 1673 police officers at the follow-up date.
Interventions: New shift schedule based on occupational health recommendations.
Outcomes measures: Work-life balance, job satisfaction and quality of life.
Methods: Mixed analyses of variances were used to test the hypotheses of within-subject and between-subject differences regarding time and gender.
Results: We found partly significant differences between the baseline and follow-up survey for work-life balance (F(1, 114) = 6.168, p=0.014, ηp² = 0.051), job satisfaction (F(1, 114) = 9.921, p=0.002, ηp² = 0.080) and quality of life (F(1, 114) = 0.593, p=0.443, ηp² = 0.005). Neither significant differences between male and female police officers nor interaction effects of time and gender were found.
Conclusion: An increase was found for each of the three outcomes 5.5 years after implementing the new shift schedule. The results contribute to the current state of research on mental health-related outcomes of working conditions in shift work. On this basis, recommendations for designing shift schedules can be deduced to promote mental health and job satisfaction for employees in shift work.