Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to investigate determinants of work intensity as a much-discussed topic in the modern working world, especially against the background of increasing processes of work acceleration and numerous indications that high work intensity can pose a health risk for employees.

Design/methodology/approach: Based on four different representative employee surveys (BIBB/BAuA Employment Survey 2018; BAuA-Working Time Survey 2015; European Working Condition Survey 2015; DGB Index 2018) in Germany, we examine the relationship between various individual and work-related characteristics and a high work intensity. Using ordinary least squares regressions, we estimated linear probability models for the analysis of the determinants of work intensity.

Findings: Our findings indicate that work intensity is a multifactorial phenomenon that can have different causes. These range from individual characteristics such as gender, higher vocational training or leadership responsibility to context factors such as restructuring at workplace or social support from supervisors and colleagues. Our research particularly shows that restructuring in the company, job insecurity, poor leadership competence of a supervisor, management responsibility or excessive long working hours are associated with increased work intensity across the four surveys analyzed.

Originality/value: The unique feature of this paper is that comparable multivariate regression analyses based on four different representative employment surveys are conducted. Hence, our research paper provides robust findings on the determinants of increased work intensity across multiple datasets.

This article is published in the "International Journal of Workplace Health Management" (2025).