Willingness to pay for flexible working conditions for people with type 2 diabetes

Background The increasing number of people with chronic diseases challenges work force capacity. Type 2 diabetes (T2D) can have work related consequences such as increased risk of sickness absence and early retirement. Laws and guidelines of most high income countries, including Denmark, require workplaces to provide reasonable work accommodations to enable people with chronic disabilities to manage their condition at work. Although successful implementation of such accommodations can depend on the willingness of co-workers to support people with T2D, little is known about the barriers to successful implementation. Aim To examine Danish workers' willingness to pay (WTP) for five workplace initiatives that help individuals with type 2 diabetes manage their diabetes at work and to examine how background characteristics influence the WTP. Method Employed participants between 25 and 67 years from an online panel (n=600) completed discrete choice experiments eliciting their WTP (reduction in monthly salary) for five workplace initiatives for people with T2D: Possibility for: ‘Part time work’; ‘customized work’, ‘extra breaks with pay’, ‘time off for medical consultations and psychoeducation with’ and ‘without pay’. The WTP in Euro=€ for the five workplace initiatives was estimated by conditional logits models. Bootstrapping was used to estimate p- values examining significant differences (p <0.05) between different characteristics of participants (gender, age, educational and income level, type of employment, self-reported health, perceived severity of diabetes) and the WTP for the five initiatives. Results Table: Background characteristics and willingness to pay (WTP=average reduction in monthly salary in EURO=€) for five different workplace initiatives (n=600) Discussion The results revealed WTP for all the five initiatives that aimed to support people with T2D to manage their diabetes at work. However, the WTP for the initiative: ‘Additional breaks with pay’ was considerable lower in comparison to the other initiatives. The WTP for the 'part-time' initiative varied on most background characteristics: Participants who were below 50 years, had less than three years of education, had low income, worked in the private sector, had poor self-reported health, and did not perceive diabetes as a severe chronic disease, had a lower WTP compared to those that did not. Although not always statistically significant, similar trends were observed with regards to the other initiatives. Although we observed an overall willingness of workers to support people with T2D this willingness varied according to the content of the particular initiative (e.g. extra breaks with pay), the demographics, self-reported health and the illness perception of workers. Targeting these factors may facilitate successful implementation of initiatives that support people with T2D retaining the link to work. No conflict of interest