Measuring More than Money

Worker well-being and the importance of work: Bridging the gap

“…In answering this question, we agree with Muñoz de Bustillo et al (2011) who emphasize the need to draw rigorously on the wider social-scientific literature for theoretical justification for the factors that matter to worker well-being. The debate between subjective and objective approaches underscores the need to be inclusive in the identification of dimensions of worker well-being, as now appears to be the case, for example, in the literature on career success in which objective and subjective measures are recognized as valid (Hall and Chandler, 2005;Ng et al, 2005).…”

“…We believe that our integrated model provides the strongest foundation for job quality researchers to use in constructing measures of job quality. This, then, can help researchers and policymakers identify the strengths and weaknesses of the European Council's framework for monitoring and analyzing job quality (European Commission, 2001), the ETUI job quality index (Leschke et al, 2008) and that of Muñoz de Bustillo et al (2011), and other efforts to define and measure European job quality in pursuit of the Lisbon Strategy goal of creating 'more and better jobs'. For example, our framework indicates that while these efforts have appropriately highlighted the importance of skills and autonomy, they overlook the importance of non-discrimination and opportunities for caring.…”

“…Such approaches can be labeled 'objective' since they prescribe what factors must be present for worker well-being to be realized. These two approaches have influenced national and international debates on job quality and remain important reference points in the theoretical and empirical literatures on both worker well-being and job quality (Muñoz de Bustillo et al, 2011). We consider both approaches below.…”

“…Approaches that fall under this heading include those in the psychology literature (Stride et al, 2007) and modern labour economics (Clark, 2011). Second, other researchers working within sociology (Gallie, 2007b) and elsewhere (Muñoz de Bustillo et al, 2011) have proposed explicit criteria for assessing well-being, say through reference to a list of factors (skill, autonomy) that give workers the opportunity to achieve well-being. Such approaches can be labeled 'objective' since they prescribe what factors must be present for worker well-being to be realized.…”

“…There are aspects of worker well-being that the literature on job quality has excluded as not related to the nature of specific jobs. For example, Gallie (2007a) largely excludes pay from his analysis of job quality because it is viewed as part of the terms of employment rather than inherent in the job itself; while Muñoz de Bustillo et al (2011) exclude measures of social protection because these are features of a labour market or welfare state, not a particular job. A more complete approach to worker well-being needs to go beyond job quality to consider workers as fully-functioning citizens who derive and experience both public and private benefits and costs from working.…”