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For Academics
Understanding the concept of job quality is central to creating good work and improving outcomes for workers, organisatons and communities.
While research has examined active labour market policies that aim to connect unemployed groups with work, it has largely focused on the supply-side rather than the demand-side. Our research contributes to better understanding the demand-side, and it includes a focus on creating and sustaining good work by understanding and improving job quality.
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Job quality refers to the overall attributes and characteristics of a job that determine its desirability and impact on an individual's well-being. Job quality consists of multiple dimensions including terms of employment; pay and benefits; intrinsic characteristics of work; work-life balance; health and safety; and voice and representation. Higher quality jobs – reflecting good work – involve the creation and maintenance of ‘good jobs’ as opposed to ‘bad jobs’.
Surprisingly, however, job quality has not been well examined from the perspective of employers – this is what our research focuses on. Job quality is also a critical dimension for analysing the demand-side of employment services and active labour market policies.
Our research aims to provide a crucial foundation for advancing scholarly knowledge and informing policies that promote high-quality, good work, which benefits employees, organisations, and society at large.
Academics and policy-makers across the advanced economies agree on the importance of job quality. Research evidence indicates that higher quality jobs, involving good work, benefit individuals and firms through enhanced job satisfaction, performance and productivity.
Higher quality jobs also contribute to worker wellbeing, creating more sustainable and competitive economies and improving social mobility. Critically, enhancing job quality does not compromise job creation.
Subsequently, the importance of job quality has sparked demands among inter-governmental bodies such as the OECD to create good jobs and improve bad jobs. In the context of COVID-19 and its aftermath, there are also calls to protect and improve the quality of jobs, to increase innovation and productivity, and aid social and economic recovery.