Summary

Occupational health and safety issues and objectives. The education sector in Quebec is not unaffected by the substantial costs resulting from absences due to physical and/or psychological disabilities (Purenne & Busque, 2022); early departures, such as retirement with financial penalties of employees at the end of their careers; and teachers dropping out during the first five years of their careers. Quebec’s Centres de services scolaires (CSS; school service centres) are responsible for insuring absence from work due to disability (AWDD) for their employees (self-insurance) and must collect absence data certified by health care professionals, along with data concerning departures due to retirements and resignations. Processing this kind of data can give occupational health and safety (OHS) stakeholders information about the frequency and duration of absences, whether or not these are accepted by the Commission des normes, de l'équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (CNESST), and on the relations between occupational injuries and uninterrupted (job retention) or terminated employment relationships (retirement or resignation). The general objective of this study, which follows up on the report by Negrini, Corbière, et al. (2018), is to analyze and compare longitudinal administrative data on absence from work and the employment relationship (retention and departures) of all staff at a Quebec CSS, taking into account the physical or psychological nature of the disability. More specifically, it should make it possible to better understand how days of AWDD may be related to the type of retirement or resignation.

Method. In this longitudinal study, four anonymous administrative databases were created over a 5- to 10-year period. This report focuses on the analyses of AWDD data observed over 5 years. Days of AWDD were extracted for all employees of all ages with regular status (teachers, support staff, professionals and executives). Trajectory analyses were done on a sample of 1,448 employees to determine whether patterns of individual leave emerged from these data. Sequence analyses were also done on a sub-sample of 550 employees to test whether transitions occurred from one type of physical and/or psychological AWDD to another. A sample (N = 477) was used to study the days of physical and/or psychological AWDD during the 5 years preceding retirement from the CSS, for each kind of retirement (early or regular). Finally, 782 members of regular, full-time teaching.

Results. The results of this report specifically concern the sub-samples observed for 5 years. Four sets of physical and/or psychological AWDD trajectories over the 5 years were identified. Among the variables studied, only women were slightly more at risk of going on sick leave, particularly for psychological AWDD alone. The sequence analyses did not reveal any specific patterns of AWDD, since sick leave is generally an unrepeated phenomenon. Employees who had taken early retirement were mainly teachers working in the preschool/elementary sector. The mean age of these employees is approximately 3 years lower than that of employees who took regular retirement. Employees who had resigned had fewer years of service at the CSS, but also more cases without any absence. Their mean number of days of psychological AWDD was lower during the evaluation at 4 years, 2 years and 1 year before the last year of employment at the CSS, compared to that of employees who were still working there. No associations between AWDD and retirement or resignation were confirmed.

Anticipated benefits. The participating CSS (management and employee representatives) will obtain a detailed picture of its employees’ AWDD and departures. To the best of our knowledge, all CSSs have an administrative database similar to the one used in this study. Based on the study results, CSSs could apply targeted interventions to prevent workplace disability and promote healthy job retention for employees, depending on their career stage, and especially for female employees. The longitudinal analysis of absences by means of trajectories, which was used here for the first time in the OHS field in Quebec, is therefore available for the education sector.