Objective Sickness absence (SA) is a significant problem for many workplaces, due to loss of productivity, increased workload on other staff, and resources spent to cover incapacity to work and restore health. To date, research on prison staff SA is still limited. High levels of SA related to mental health problems, including job-related stress, anxiety and depression have been reported for UK prison staff. In conjunction with stressful and often challenging working conditions which prison staff experience, organisational change can also impact on SA. In 2018 the Scottish Prison Service introduced comprehensive smoking restrictions across all prisons to protect prison staff and people in custody from second-hand smoke (SHS) exposure. The multi-phase, multi-methods Tobacco in Prisons (TIPs) study has evaluated this process and the impacts of the implementation of the smokefree policy; one part of this evaluation was to assess whether the smokefree policy impacted on prison staff SA rates and duration.

Methods and Results Box-Jenkins Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) time series is used to analyse potential changes to sickness absence rates before and after the introduction of the smokefree policy. Change in absence duration before and after the implementation of the smokefree free policy are analysed using Kaplan-Meier survival curves and Cox’s proportional hazards models for all sickness absence events and by cause. Results from each methodology will be presented for the entire prison service, by cause of sickness absence event and by SHS exposure levels.

Conclusions The findings of this study cover a significant knowledge gap on sickness absence in an occupational cohort that often faces challenging and stressful working conditions. In the TIPs study we are able to model potential impacts on SA during organisational change. This information can help employers when developing policies and workplace interventions for employees in improving health and return-to-work times.