Job design, employment practices and well-being: a systematic review of intervention studies

There is inconsistent evidence that deliberate attempts to improve job design realise improvements in well-being. We investigated the role of other employment practices, either as instruments for job redesign or as instruments that augment job redesign. Our primary outcome was well-being. Where studies also assessed performance, we considered performance as an outcome. We reviewed 33 intervention studies. We found that well-being and performance may be improved by: training workers to improve their own jobs; training coupled with job redesign; and system wide approaches that simultaneously enhance job design and a range of other employment practices. We found insufficient evidence to make any firm conclusions concerning the effects of training managers in job redesign and that participatory approaches to improving job design have mixed effects. Successful implementation of interventions was associated with worker involvement and engagement with interventions, managerial commitment to interventions and integration of interventions with other organisational systems. Practitioner Summary: Improvements in well-being and performance may be associated with system-wide approaches that simultaneously enhance job design, introduce a range of other employment practices and focus on worker welfare. Training may have a role in initiating job redesign or augmenting the effects of job design on well-being

What is a ‘good’ job? Modelling job quality for blue collar workers

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Ergonomics on 06/04/2016, available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00140139.2016.1165870.This paper proposes a model of job quality, developed from interviews with blue collar workers: bus drivers, manufacturing operatives and cleaners (n=80). The model distinguishes between core features, important for almost all workers, and 'job fit' features, important to some but not others, or where individuals might have different preferences. Core job features found important for almost all interviewees included job security, personal safety, and having enough pay to meet their needs. 'Job fit' features included autonomy and the opportunity to form close relationships. These showed more variation between participants; priorities were influenced by family commitments, stage of life and personal preference. The resulting theoretical perspective indicates the features necessary for a job to be considered 'good' by the person doing it, whilst not adversely affecting their health. The model should have utility as a basis for measuring and improving job quality and the laudable goal of creating 'good jobs'. Practitioner summary Good work can contribute positively to health and wellbeing, but there is a lack of agreement regarding the concept of a 'good' job. A model of job quality has been constructed based on semi-structured worker interviews (n=80). The model emphasises the need to take into account variation between individuals in their preferred work characteristics

Social Work\u27s Response to Poverty: From Benefits Dependence to Economic Self-Sufficiency

This article appears in the Journal of Social Work Education’s Special Section on Financial Capability and Asset Building. an earlier version of this article was presented during the April 2015 conference, Financial Capability and Asset Building: Advancing Education, Research, and Practice in Social Work. The conference was hosted by the Center for Social Development and the Financial Social Work Initiative at the University of Maryland School of Social Work

Work-Life Imbalance in Call Centres and Software Development

The paper evaluates the centrality of work to employees in two growing employment sectors, call-centres and software development. It then examines evidence for extensions of work into household and family life in these two sectors. Extensions are identified as tangible, such as unpaid overtime, or intangible, represented by incursions imported from work, such as exhaustion and stress. The study finds that organizational pressures, combined with lack of work centrality, result in work intruding into non-work areas of employee lives, though intrusions manifest themselves in different ways according to type of work, levels of worker autonomy and organizational support. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2003..