A Study On Quality Of Work Life At Lucas- Tvs

Introduction

Quality of Work Life: Quality of work life (QWL) is viewed as an alternative to the control approach of managing people. The QWL approach considers people as an ‘asset’ to the organization rather than as ‘costs’. It believes that people perform better when they are allowed to participate in managing their work and making decisions.

This approach motivates people by satisfying not only their economic needs but also their social and psychological ones. To satisfy the new generation workforce, organizations need to concentrate on job designs and organization of work. Further, today’s workforce is realizing the importance of relationships and is trying to strike a balance between career and personal lives.

Successful organizations support and provide facilities to their people to help them to balance the scales. In this process, organizations are coming up with new and innovative ideas to improve the quality of work and the quality of the work life of every individual in the organization. Various programs like flex time, alternative work schedules, compressed work weeks, telecommuting, etc., are being adopted by these organizations.

Technological advances further help organizations to implement these programs successfully. Organizations are enjoying the fruits of implementing QWL programs in the form of increased productivity, and an efficient, satisfied, and committed workforce that aims to achieve organizational objectives. The future work world will also have more women entrepreneurs and they will encourage and adopt QWL programs.

Company Profile

Various authors and researchers have proposed models of Quality of working life which include a wide range of factors. Selected models are reviewed below. Hackman and Oldham (1976)(5) drew attention to what they described as psychological growth needs as relevant to the consideration of Quality of working life. Several such needs were identified; Skill variety, Task Identity, Task significance, Autonomy, and Feedback.

They suggested that such needs have to be addressed if employees are to experience a high quality of working life. In contrast to such theory-based models, Taylor (1979)(6) more pragmatically identified the essential components of Quality of working life as; basic extrinsic job factors of wages, hours, and working conditions, and the intrinsic job notions of the nature of the work itself. He suggested that a number of other aspects could be added, including; individual power, employee participation in the management, fairness and equity, social support, use of one’s present skills, self-development, a meaningful future at work, social relevance of the work or product, effect on extra work activities. Taylor suggested that relevant Quality of working life concepts may vary according to organization and employee group.

Measurement

There are few recognized measures of quality of working life, and of those that exist few have evidence of validity and reliability, that is, there is very limited literature based on peer-reviewed evaluations of available assessments. A recent statistical analysis of a new measure, the Work-Related Quality of Life scale (WRQoL)(18), indicates that this assessment device should prove to be a useful instrument, although further evaluation would be useful. The WRQoWL measure uses 6 core factors to explain most of the variation in an individual’s quality of working life: Job and Career Satisfaction; Working Conditions; General Well-Being; HomeWork Interface; Stress at Work and Control at Work.

The Job & Career Satisfaction Job and Career satisfaction (JCS)scale of the Work-Related Quality of Life scale (WRQoL) is said to reflect an employee’s feelings about, or evaluation of, their satisfaction or contentment with their job and career and the training they receive to do it. Within the WRQoL measure, JCS is reflected by questions asking how satisfied people feel about their work. It has been proposed that this Positive Job Satisfaction factor is influenced by various issues including clarity of goals and role ambiguity, appraisal, recognition and reward, personal development career benefits, and enhancement and training needs.

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