Quality of Work lifeWhat is quality

Quality of Work life
What is quality of work life (QWL)? The term refers to the favorableness or un favorableness of a total job environment for people. QWL programs are another way in which organizations recognize their responsibility to develop jobs and working conditions that are excellent for people as well as for the economic health of the organization. The elements in a typical QWL program include many items discussed earlier in this book under the general area of supportive organizational behavior open communications, equitable reward systems, a concern for employee job security and satisfying careers, and participation
Verbal reprimand by supervisor
Written reprimand, with a record in personnel file
One to three day suspension from work
Suspension for one week or longer
Discharge for cause
in decision making. Many early QWL efforts focused on job enrichment, which is a major topic in this section. In addition to improving the work system, QWL programs usually emphasize development of employee skills, the reduction of occupational stress, and the development of more cooperative labor-management relations.
A Rationale
Job specialization and simplification were popular in the early part of this century. Employee were assigned narrow jobs and supported by rigid hierarchy in the expectation that efficiency would improve. The idea was to lower costs by using unskilled workers who could be trained easily to do a small, repetitive part of each job.
Many difficulties developed from that classical job design, however. There was excessive division of labor. Workers became socially isolated from their coworkers because their highly specialized jobs weakened their community of interest in the whole product. De-skilled workers lost pride in their work and became bored with their jobs. Higher-order (Social and growth) needs were left unsatisfied. The result was higher turnover and absenteeism, declines in quality, and alienated workers. Conflict often arose as workers sought to improve their conditions and organizations failed to respond appropriately. The real cause was that in many instances the job itself simply was not satisfying.
A factor contributing to the problem was that the workers themselves were changing. They became more educated, more affluent (Partly because of the effectiveness of classical job design), and more independent. They began reaching for higher order needs, something more than merely earning their bread. Employers now had two reasons for redesigning jobs and organizations for a better QWL:
 Classical design originally gave inadequate attention to human needs.
 The needs and aspirations of workers themselves were changing.
One option that emerged was to redesign jobs to have the attributes desired by people, and redesign organizations to have the environment desired by people. This approach seeks to improve QWL . There is a need to give workers more of a challenge, more of a whole task, more opportunity to use their ideas. Close attention to QWL provides a more humanized work environment. It attempts to serve the higher-order needs of workers as well as their more basic needs. It attempts to serve the higher order needs of workers as well as their more basic needs, It seeks to employ the higher skills of workers and to provide an environment that encourages them to improve their skills. The idea is that human resources should be developed and not simply used. Further, the work should not have excessively negative conditions. It should no put workers under undue stress. It should not damage or degrade their humanness. It should not be threatening or unduly dangerous. Finally, it should contribute to, or at least leave unimpaired, workers’ abilities to perform in other life roles, such as citizen, spouse, and parent. That is, work should contribute to general social advancement.