Authors

• Ministry of Labour
• Statistics Finland

Keywords

arrangement of working time, autonomy at work, discrimination, employees, job characteristics, job security, personnel management, personnel policy, telework, wages, working conditions, workloads

Abstract

The survey studied employee opinion on the quality of working life in Finland. Main themes were job characteristics, work environment, conflicts at the workplace, influence over decisions, working hours, wages, employment security and equality. The year 1997 survey contained new questions on discrimination.

First, the respondents were asked about the number of years they had worked for the employer they were working for at the time, type of contract, number of persons at the workplace, what kind of changes there had been in staff numbers, working hours and contracts over the past 12 months, and whether people had been transferred to other units. Further questions covered team work at the workplace, whether there had been conflicts at the workplace, between what groups and whether the conflicts had decreased or increased over the past 12 months. Employee influence over, for instance, workload and tasks, and changes in the degree of incfluence were investigated as well as trade union influence and R's membership in a trade union or a professional association.

Next set of questions covered overtime at work, overtime compensation, flexibility in working times, job characteristics, and changes over the past year in workload, physical or mental stress, in access to training etc. Wage level and pay systems were charted. One topic pertained to whether the respondents had presented any ideas to improve working conditions, products, services or working methods at the workplace. A few questions covered whether there were any actions to ensure the employees' health, occupational safety and competence. The respondents were asked how likely it was that they would be dismissed or laid off, or their tasks or working hours would be changed over the next year.

Opinions were charted on employment situation in Finland and what kind of changes were happening in working life in, for instance, relating to management style, possibility to influence decisions, the financial situation of their organisation. The respondents were asked whether they had done work from home using the modern technology. Discrimination at work based on ethnic group, age or gender was explored as well as relations and conflicts with colleagues from different ethnic backgrounds.

Background variables included the respondent's gender, age, degree of urbanity of the municipality of residence, occupational status and economic activity, industry of employment, employer type, weekly working hours, additional jobs, industry of additional job, basic education and vocational education. Most background variables were obtained from the Labour Force Survey 1997 telephone interviews.