WHAT IS QWL?
The term refers to the favourableness or unfavourableness of a total job environment for people. QWL programs are another way in which
organisations recognise their responsibility to develop jobs and working conditions that are excellent for people as well as for economic health of the organisation. The elements in a typical QWL program include – open communications, equitable reward systems, a concern for employee job security and satisfying careers and participation in decision making. Many early QWL efforts focus on job enrichment. In addition to improving the work system, QWL programs usually emphasise development of employee skills, the reduction of occupational stress and the development of more co-operative labour-management relations.
Vigorous Domestic and International competition drive organisations to be more productive. Proactive managers and human resource departments respond to this challenge by finding new ways to improve productivity. Some strategies rely heavily upon new capital investment and technology. Others seek changes in employee relations practices.
Human resource departments are involved with efforts to improve productivity through changes in employee relations. QWL means having good supervision, good working conditions, good pay and benefits and an interesting, challenging and rewarding job. High QWL is sought through an employee relations philosophy that encourages the use of QWL efforts, which are systematic attempts by an organisation to give workers greater opportunities to affect their jobs and their contributions to the organisation’s overall effectiveness. That is, a proactive human resource department finds ways to empower employees so that they draw on their “brains and wits,” usually by getting the employees more involved in the decision-making process.
A Rationale
Job specialisation and simplification were popular in the early part of this century. Employees were assigned narrow jobs and supported by a rigid hierarchy in the expectation that efficiency would improve. The idea was to lower cost by using unskilled workers who could be easily trained to do a small, repetitive part of each job.
Many difficulties developed from that classical job design, however. There was excessive division of labour. Workers became socially isolated from their co-workers because their highly specialised 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 organisations failed to respond appropriately. The real cause was that in many instances the job itself simply was not satisfying.
Forces For Change
A factor contributing to the problem was that the workers themselves were changing. They became 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 re-designing jobs and organisations for a better QWL:
vClassical design originally gave inadequate attention to human needs.
vThe needs and aspirations of workers themselves were changing.
Humanised Work Through QWL
One option was to re-design jobs to have the attributes desired by people, and re-design organisations to have the environment desired by the 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 humanised work environment.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 not 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.
Job Enlargement vs. Job Enrichment
The modern interest in quality of work life was stimulated through efforts to change the scope of people’s jobs in attempting to motivate them.
Job scope has two dimensions – breadth and depth.
Job breadth is the number of different tasks an individual is directly responsible for. It ranges from very narrow (one task performed repetitively) to wide (several tasks). Employees with narrow job breadth were sometimes given a wider variety of duties in order to reduce their monotony; this process is called
job enlargement. In order to perform these additional duties, employees spend less time on each duty. Another approach to changing job breadth is
job rotation, which involves periodic assignment of an employee to completely different sets of job activities. Job rotation is an effective way to develop multiple skills in employees, which benefits the organisation while creating greater job interest and career options for the employee.
Job enrichment takes a different approach by adding additional motivators to a job to make it more rewarding. It was developed by Frederick Herzberg on the basis of his studies indicating that the most effective way to motivate workers was by focusing on higher-order needs.
Job enrichment seeks to add
depth to a job by giving workers more control, responsibility and discretion over hoe their job is performed. The difference between enlargement and enrichment is illustrated in the figure on the next page.
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