Authors

• Ministry of Labour
• Statistics Finland

Keywords

autonomy at work, discrimination, employees, job characteristics, job satisfaction, job security, occupational training, personnel management, personnel policy, wages, workers participation, working conditions, workloads

Abstract

The annual survey studied employee opinion on the quality of working life in Finland. Main themes were psychosocial working environment, job characteristics, pay systems, satisfaction with the job, employment security, training and development, capacity to work, and bullying and discrimination at work. The year 2003 survey contained more questions than previously on workplace characteristics.

First, the respondents were asked how many 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, contracts and organisational structure over the past 12 months, and whether people had been transferred to other units. Further questions covered team work, and whether there had been bullying or conflicts at the workplace, between what groups and whether the conflicts had decreased or increased over the past 12 months.

Next set of questions covered autonomy and influence at work, overtime and its compensation, and membership in a trade union or professional association. Changes over the past year in workload, physical or mental stress, in access to training, support from supervisors etc were charted as well as pay systems and satisfaction with the workplace. One topic pertained to whether the respondents had presented any ideas to improve working conditions, products, services or working methods at the workplace and whether there had been other development initiatives. Other questions covered workplace characteristics and the respondents' participation in job-related training and development. 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. A number of questions investigated how the employees' capacity to work and occupational health and safety had been taken into account at the workplace, the respondents' sickness absences, illnesses, and estimate of own mental and physical capacity to work. Discrimination at work based on ethnic group, age, gender or contract type was explored.

Background variables included the respondent's gender, age, type of municipality, major region (NUTS2), region (NUTS3), occupational group, status in employment, industry of employment, employer type, weekly working hours, additional jobs, industry of additional job, and basic and vocational education. Most background variables were obtained from the Labour Force Survey 2003 telephone interviews.