Survey of Working Hours in the Petroleum Industry

SINTEF has conducted a study of trends in working hours, the use of overtime and extended offshore periods over the past 10 years. The results show that the use of overtime and extended offshore periods has increased in recent years, after a fall during the period 2013-2015. The use of overtime is now approaching the level it was at in 2011.

SINTEF writes that “this means that the use of overtime has been increasing in recent years, and attention should be paid to the future of this trend and whether it continues to increase.”

There are variations in which groups of employees work overtime, with different areas of work having different degrees of overtime use. Managers in particular, and employees in the processing and well servicing areas report a lot of overtime work.

The study also shows that those reporting overtime are more likely to report experiencing high workloads, conflicting goals, high job demands, low job control, as well as some health complaints.

SINTEF points out that different questions than those included in the RNNP questionnaire and a different research design are needed to investigate whether overtime work has an impact on sickness absence and health outcomes beyond that.

Background and research question
The background to the study was findings from audits, and a need to survey working hours on the continental shelf. The research questions on which SINTEF’s work was based were: what characterises the trend in working hours and workloads for offshore employees over the past 10 years? and what relationships exist between working hours and workloads and different outcome measures related to sick leave, health complaints, injuries, goal conflicts, job control and job demands?

SINTEF has based its work on data from the RNNP questionnaire survey, which is distributed to all employees on the Norwegian continental shelf every two years, and aims to track developments in the working environment, the HSE climate and health. The next RNNP questionnaire survey will be conducted in autumn 2023.