Introduction Work time control (WTC) is defined as ‘employees´ possibilities to control over the duration and distribution of own work time’. A recent study found shorter sickness spells on wards using participatory scheduling compared to traditional scheduling, and that a high level of control over working times provides possibilities to adjust job demands with employees´ prevailing resources.

Objectives The objective of this study was to investigate the association of WTC on sickness absence among nursing personnel in the public health care sector in Denmark.

Methods The study was based on the Danish Working Hour Database (DWHD), which is a nationwide database based on payroll data primarily from all the public hospitals in Denmark during 2007–2015. For the current analyses, we included 2049 departments (31 595 nursing personnel) that introduced the self-rostering tool ‘MinTid’ in the period 2011 to 2016. Rosters using MinTid are based on a combination of input and wishes from the employees regarding individual working hours and staffing requirements from the organization. Information on daily working hours as well as sickness absence is objectively obtained from the DWHD. Data was summarized on a yearly basis and analyzed using Proc Mixed, including repeated measures.

Results There was a notable difference in the number of sickness spell per year before (3.43 (3.41–3.52)) and after (3.36 (3.32–3.40)) introducing ‘MinTid’, and also a remarkable difference in the number of short-term (1–3 days) sickness spells per year before (3.36 (2.63–2.70) and after (2.57 (2.54–2.61) ‘MinTid’. We observed no difference in total number of sick days per year before and after introducing ‘MinTid’.

Conclusion Introduction of self-rostering tools seems to reduce the number of particularly short-term sickness spells in Danish public hospitals.