Quality of Work Life Essay

In todays high tech, fast-paced world, the pee surroundings is very different than it was a generation ago. It is now r ar for a person to stay with a single company his or her stallion failing conduct. thither are multiple reasons for this, entirely nearly because employees are often willing to leave a company for give way opportunities, companies pick out to find ways not only to hire qualified people, but also to retain them. As much companies start to realize that a happy employee is an effective employee, they have started to look for ways to repair the realise environment.Many have implemented various wee-life programs to help employees, including alternate work arrangements, onsite childcare, exercise facilities, relaxed dress codes, and more. Quality-of-work-life programs go beyond work/life programs by focusing attention little on employee needfully outside of work and realizing that assembly line stress and the quality of life at work is counterbalance mor e direct bearing on worker satisfaction. Open communications, mentoring programs, and lift more amicable relationships among workers are some of the ways employers are up(p) the quality of work life.Emerging TrendsForces For ChangeA factor add to the problem was that the workers themselves were changing. They became educated, more affluent (partly because of the effectiveness of classical moving in design), and more independent. They began reaching for higher-order needs, something more than merely earning their bread. Employers now had two reasons for re-designing commerces and organisations for a better QWL * Classical design originally gave inadequate attention to human needs. * The needs and aspirations of workers themselves were changing.Humanised Work Through QWLOne option was to re-design jobs to have the attributes desired by people, and re-design organisations to have the environment desired by the people.This approach seeks to improve QWL. There is a need to give work ers more of a challenge, more of a whole task, more opportunity to use their ideas. Close attention to QWL provides a more humanised work environment. It attempts to serve the higher-order needs of workers as well as their more basic needs.It seeks to employ the higher skills of workers and to provide an environment that encourages them to improve their skills. The idea is that human resources should be developed and not simply used. Further, the work should not have excessively negative conditions. It should not put workers to a lower place undue stress. It should not damage or degrade their humanness. It should not be threatening or unduly dangerous. Finally, it should contribute to, or at to the lowest degree leave unimpaired, workers abilities to perform in other life roles, such as citizen, spouse and parent. That is, work should contribute to general social advancement. task expansion vs. labor EnrichmentThe modern interest in quality of work life was stimulated through ef forts to change the scope of peoples jobs in attempting to motivate them. Job scope has two dimensions fullness and depth. Job breadth is the number of different tasks an individual is directly responsible for. It ranges from very press (one task performed repetitively) to wide (several tasks). Employees with narrow job breadth were sometimes disposed a wider variety of duties in order to reduce their monotony this branch is called job enlargement. In order to perform these additional duties, employees spend less time on each duty. Another approach to changing job breadth is job rotation, which involves periodic assignment of an employee to completely different sets of job activities. Job rotation is an effective way to develop multiple skills in employees, which benefits the organisation while creating greater job interest and career options for the employee.Job enrichment takes a different approach by adding additional motivators to a job to make it more rewarding. It was dev eloped by Frederick Herzberg on the basis of his studies indicating that the most effective way to motivate workers was by focusing on higher-order needs. Job enrichment seeks to add depth to a job by giving workers more control, responsibility and discretion over hoe their job is performed. The difference surrounded by enlargement and enrichment is illustrated in the figure on the next page.