Research That Matters (January 17 - 20, 2008)

Purpose: Social workers have joined economists and public policy makers in recognizing that sustainable economic development is a critical strategy for addressing social injustice within the United States and globally. Indeed, people across the political spectrum have observed that effective employment environments may be among the most effective social programs. Unfortunately, as thought-leaders work to create jobs through economic development, their discussions sometimes gloss over critical conversations about the elements of “quality employment” as if “any job” is better than “no job.” Several factors constrain productive discussion about quality employment. Within countries, employees may articulate different perspectives about how to operationalize “quality employment” than do employers or public policy makers. However, these perspectives are rarely compared and contrasted. Second, perceptions about quality employment vary significantly country to country, reflecting economic circumstances, political situation, and cultural values. This paper presents data and insights about quality employment from the Global Perspectives Project. Methods: Quantitative and qualitative data were gathered about quality employment from the perspectives of employees, employers, and public policy in the Czech Republic, Japan, and the United States. Employee data from four nationally-representative surveys were analyzed (regression analyses): the World Values Survey, the Quality of Working Conditions Survey (European Foundation), the General Survey on Diversified Type of Employment (GSDTE), and the National Study of the Changing Workforce. Semi-structured interviews conducted with employers in the three countries supplement the descriptive information obtained from the Cranet cross-national survey about the prevalence of employers' human resource policies. The content of public policies was analyzed to understand public sector priorities with regard to “quality employment.” Finally, employee priorities were compared to employers' practices for recruiting, engaging and retaining workers in the context of the public policies in the three countries. Results: Employee perspectives about some aspects of quality employment are relatively consistent across the three countries. For example, 72.6% of Czech respondents to the World Values Survey, 83% of Japanese respondents, and 88.7% of American respondents mentioned that the amount of pay was important to the quality of a job. U.S. respondents strongly emphasized interesting work as an aspect of quality of employment (81.3%), but the majority of Czech and Japanese respondents also mentioned its importance. Other job characteristics are valued to different extents; e.g. job security was reported as important by 80.3% of the Japanese respondents but only 51.8% of the Czech respondents. Only in the United States did the majority of respondents (61%) say that the opportunity to use their own initiative was important to them in determining what a good job was. Implications: The quality of employment affects many marginalized people around the world – young adults having difficulty transitioning into the workforce, immigrants, people living in developing and transitional economies, employees with caregiving responsibilities, and older workers. How quality is perceived, both within and across countries, thus impacts economic development through workplace policies. Findings in this research suggest a framework for understanding and operationalizing quality employment that can be used for corrective action by employers and policy makers.