Tekijät

• Statistics Finland. Interview and Survey Services
• Ministry of Employment and the Economy

Asiasanat

arrangement of working time, autonomy at work, discrimination, economic recession, employees, employment contracts, job characteristics, job satisfaction, job security, local bargaining, occupational training, personnel management, personnel policy, telework, wages, working conditions, workloads

Sisällön kuvaus

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 2011 survey contained new questions on teleworking, staff training and development, and how employers took into account the circumstances of employees in work arrangements.

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, and what kind of changes there had been in staff numbers, working hours, contracts, and tasks during the past 12 months, and whether people had been transferred to other units. A number of questions pertained to co-operation negotiations, their process and results. Further questions covered team work, whether there had been conflicts at the workplace, between what groups and whether the conflicts had decreased or increased over the past 12 months. Incidents of bullying, harassment and violence were charted.

Next set of questions investigated the respondent's autonomy and influence at work and other job characteristics, overtime and its compensation, flexible working time arrangements, and R's membership in a trade union or professional association. Changes over the past year in workload, physical or mental stress, access to training etc. were explored as well as pay and bonus systems, and satisfaction with pay. Psychosocial working environment was charted with a number of questions, for instance, whether the relationships between the employees and supervisors/managers were open and confidential, whether trying new things was supported etc. 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. The respondents' participation in job-related training and development was investigated.

One theme pertained to job satisfaction. The respondents were asked to what extent they agreed with a number of statements relating to staff sufficiency, organisation of work, access to information, physical and mental stress etc. They 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. Views were probed on the employer's financial situation, effects of the economic recession on the workplace, employment situation in Finland and possible changes in working life. 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, and estimate of own mental and physical capacity to work.

The next set of questions charted whether the employer took into account the respondent's life circumstances in the number of work tasks, flexibility of working time and career development. Relating to remote working, the respondents were asked how often they worked at home, their reasons for working at home (e.g. agreement with the employer), number of hours spent working at home in the previous four weeks, whether they worked somewhere else than their home and workplace, and whether they had been in contact with the workplace or clients (by using telecommunications) outside their regular hours in the previous four weeks. Discrimination at work based on ethnic group, age, gender and type of contract was explored.

Background variables included the respondent's year of birth, age, gender, region, type of municipality, education, economic activity, status in employment, industry of employment, occupational group, employer type, weekly working hours, and additional jobs. Information on age, gender, region, type of municipality and education level were obtained from registers. The other background variables were obtained from the Labour Force Survey 2011 telephone interviews which were often conducted together with the Finnish Working Life Barometer interview.