Having many people in fixed-term employment creates anxiety throughout the organisation

In 2023, the project received just over SEK 17 million in funding over six years from the research council Forte.
“But for the higher education part of the project, we started collecting data in 2016 via an online survey of SULF members,” says Lindfors. “In 2021, we did another online survey using data from Statistics Sweden, with a follow-up in 2023. And we have supplemented these surveys with interviews.”

The project approaches job security and precarious employment in two different ways. One is that the participants are asked to report what is written in their employment contract.
“We ask if they are fixed-term employees, employed for a certain project with a specified end date, or permanently employed without an end date.”

Even there it is complicated. The number of different forms of employment makes people uncertain.
“We have an infinite number of categories of fixed-term employees. That raises questions such as ‘if I have fixed-term employment, but the end date is constantly moved back when I bring in new funding, what kind of employment do I have?’”

So the project team has decided to regard employment as fixed-term if it is dependent on research money coming in or other conditions being met. This is in contrast to permanent employment, for example when someone receives faculty funding.

The second way to approach job security is to ask about the people’s perception and feelings of insecurity.
“These are questions such as ‘am I worried about losing my job?’ But also questions about missing out on things that a job brings and if I worry about losing things that I value that come with my employment. It could be that people are concerned about losing research time, or that they may lose colleagues that they value highly.”

Petra Lindfors reflects on the contradiction between perceived pressure and perceived reward at work. “People who have insecure employment with regard to the employment contract itself seem to have a worse situation because they perceive more pressure and less reward in their work.”

But at the same time, she says, it is not that simple, because even people who are permanently employed worry.
“When we examine fatigue and self-evaluated health, the consequences of pressure in relation to various health-related aspects are comparable for fixed-term employees and permanent employees. What differs is the reward, which seems to have different importance. Fixed-term employees find it harder to see rewards in their work. It seems that the big reward is permanent employment.”

When the project team combines quantitative surveys with interview data, a clearer picture emerges.

Permanently employed people have to deal with all their fixed-term colleagues coming and going, and this also becomes a burden and source of stress.
“The permanent employees need to ensure continuity, and they perhaps also need to do a little more of the ‘boring administrative work’. You cannot give the responsibility for administrative and organisational development work to people who are in the organisation temporarily, which might be something positive for them. So the bottom line is that, depending on our employment conditions, we may have equivalent workloads and pressures, but fixed-term employees have fewer, or different, rewards at work.”

In the project, survey responses were analysed and groups were identified that expressed different types of perceived insecurity in their daily lives. One group feels very secure, and the majority of them have permanent employment, but in that group, there is also a small sub-group that has fixed-term employment.

As a major contrast, there is the very insecure group, and there we find both fixed-term employees and permanent employees.

Other research on job security shows that insecurity itself causes anxiety.
“If we are worried on a daily basis, we know generally that it is bad in the long run. It is the same no matter who is anxious and what they are worried about.”

But here they have included people who have a doctoral qualification.
“It is very clear from our interviews that everyone is extremely aware of their privileged position.”, says  Lindfors, and thinks it is interesting that anxiety also has negative effects among people who have completed doctorate programmes.

“The health consequences that I am particularly interested in with regard to recovery and self-evaluated health and well-being show that they also erode our resources in the long run.”

No effects can be seen in the higher education sector, however, when it comes to long-term sick leave statistics.
“But we have significantly more people who say that they work while they are ill. It is obvious that if people work even though they are ill, and even work overtime, then the pressure accumulates. And if we do not get enough rest and recovery, there is actually a danger of long-term sick leave in the future.”

Petra Lindfors emphasises that a high ratio of insecure employment positions impacts the entire organisation.
“I think it is important to remember that it does not just have consequences for those with precarious employment. Because even those who have objectively secure positions feel some form of insecurity. It definitely has consequences for the entire workplace.”

She questions whether the high number of fixed-term contracts is necessary.
“Because of the way higher education institutions are organised, we may never see a situation where there are no fixed-term employees. But the question I ask myself based on our project is: is it necessary to have so many?”