Authors

• Statistics Finland. Interview and Survey Services
• Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment

Keywords

COVID-19, career development, employees, employment, employment opportunities, expectation, flexible working time, hours of work, job satisfaction, occupational life, telework, wages, working conditions, workloads, workplace bullying

Abstract

The annual survey studied employee opinion on the quality of working life in Finland. Main themes included organisation of work, development opportunities and flexibility, learning and training at work, wages, workplace bullying, capacity to work, and changes in working life. Questions in the barometer have mainly remained the same each year. The 2020 collection round included new questions regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.

First, the respondents were asked about the number of people employed at their workplace, changes in the number of staff, distribution of work and tasks, and implementation of new working methods and systems over the past 12 months. Satisfaction in the working environment was charted with questions about openness, encouragement and equality in the workplace, job stability, and opportunities for employees to develop and apply new ideas. Further questions covered measures taken to improve employees' capacity to work, safety of work environment, and skills of employees. Discrimination at work based on ethnic group, age, gender, type of job contract, and health status was explored. Incidents of bullying, harassment and violence at work were surveyed.

The next set of questions investigated the respondents' membership in a trade union or professional association, flexible working time arrangements at the workplace, pay and bonus systems, and satisfaction with the pay level. The respondents' participation in job-related training and the contents of the training (e.g. IT, leadership skills, communication skills) were surveyed. The development of the workplace was also investigated. The use of virtual workspaces and social media services such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs as part of work tasks was charted.

Autonomy at work was surveyed by asking about influence over own work tasks and working pace, over the distribution of work in the workplace, and about working to a tight schedule. The respondents were asked about work-related calls, emails and messages they had had to attend to outside their official working hours in the past 12 months. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on working conditions was investigated with questions on whether the respondents had worked remotely before the COVID-19 pandemic, whether they had started to work remotely because of the pandemic, whether they now had to do more remote work than before the pandemic, and how satisfied they had been with remote work during the pandemic.

One set of questions investigated the employees' perceived workload, capacity to work, estimates of own mental and physical capacity to work, and sickness absences. Additionally, the respondents' experiences of stress, mental exhaustion, and excitement related to work were surveyed. The respondents were asked whether they had been temporarily laid off due to the COVID-19 pandemic, whether their working hours had been reduced because of the pandemic, and how the pandemic had impacted their workload. The respondents were asked how likely they thought it was that they would be dismissed or temporarily laid off, or that their tasks would change over the next year. Finally, views were probed on the respondents' likelihood of getting an equal job if they became unemployed, on the general employment situation in Finland, possible changes in working life in general, and the employer's financial situation.

Background variables included, among others, the respondent's year of birth, age, gender, status in employment, employer type, industry of employment, type of contract, weekly working hours, overtime, and socioeconomic status.