Authors

• Rauas, Minna (Nuoriso- ja Liikunta-alan asiantuntijat ry (NUOLI))

Keywords

adolescents, job satisfaction, motivation, well-being (health), working conditions, workplace relations, youth work, youth workers

Abstract

The survey charted the occupational well-being and health of youth workers in Finland. The study was conducted by Nuoriso- ja Liikunta-alan asiantuntijat ry (NUOLI) in collaboration with Humak University of Applied Sciences and funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture.

First, the respondents were asked whether they thought they would be in the same or similar work tasks in a year, in five years and until they retired, as well as whether they had considered changing jobs or their field of work in the past year.

Next, the respondents' occupational well-being was examined with questions on, for example, how the respondents would rate their current well-being at work, whether they had experienced feelings of success or inadequacy in their work, and whether they had ever been in contact with a health professional because of work-related exhaustion. The respondents were also asked about their influence over their work tasks, the effect of their own personality and occupational identity on how they did their work, and their opportunities to participate in additional work-related training. Some questions focused on the respondents' workplace community and how the respondents perceived their community (e.g. whether the community provided them with peer support, there were power struggles within the community, work tasks were evenly distributed among co-workers, and the community held similar values). The respondents' opinions on management in their workplace was examined with questions on, for example, whether they received support from their superiors and whether their superiors were interested in their work.

The next questions surveyed the respondents' views on the objectives of their work, external demands regarding their work, and the structure of their work tasks. The respondents were also asked how various aspects of their work, such as job description, annual operational plans, and action plans for crisis situations, were documented at their workplace. Networking with people sharing the same profession as well as multidisciplinary networking were examined from the perspective of occupational well-being. Questions included, for example, whether the respondents thought the networks supported their own work and well-being at work and whether the challenges and needs of youth work were well understood within the multidisciplinary networks. Finally, the effect of social phenomena on the respondents' occupational well-being was surveyed. The respondents were asked, for example, whether the financing of their work created stress, whether using social media had negative effects on them, and whether the increase in remote work due to COVID-19 had increased or decreased their well-being. The respondents' views on how their clients (youth) affected their occupational well-being were also examined (e.g. whether they thought that they received mainly positive feedback from the young people they worked with or that they were not properly able to meet the youth's needs in their work).

Background variables included the respondent's gender, age, level of education, employment history, type of job contract, type of employer, number of inhabitants in the municipality where their workplace was located, and job description.