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00:00:33 Mary McCaughey
Hello and welcome to this edition of Eurofound Talks. Today, we are going to be looking at the topic of job quality in today's workplace. We've already talked about issues like telework, sustainable work and, indeed, we have with us today Barbara Gerstenberger to discuss these issues again. The reason for that is that we are looking at it from the perspective of the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact and ramifications that COVID-19 had on the labour market. As we know, there were workers who were providing frontline services who saw a huge intensification of work as they struggled to meet the demand. We also found people largely redundant during the lockdowns, and we saw workplaces that went into heavy restrictions. So, essentially, we know that there have been huge implications across the labour market for jobs, potentially, the quality of those jobs. Happily, for us here at Eurofound, we carried out a survey during this time, which was called the European Working Conditions Telephone Survey, and that data and research is going to allow us to really explore job quality and how employees experienced this whole period. So, it's a large topic, but welcome, Barbara, to talk to us today.
00:01:55 Barbara Gerstenberger
Thank you very much. Happy to be here.
00:01:57 Mary McCaughey
So, Barbara, maybe just to give us an outline to begin with on the EWCTS, the Working Conditions Telephone Survey this year. Why is it such an important resource, and what does it provide us with?
00:02:00 Barbara Gerstenberger
We conducted this survey in 2021, so when Europe was still very much in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic. We talked to more than 70,000 workers in the EU but also in nine other European, but non-EU countries. We asked about working conditions, a whole range of questions, all different dimensions of working conditions, but we also asked about work outcomes, so work-life balance issues experienced, health issues, well-being, engagement etc., and that now allows us, on the one hand, to make connections and point out relationships between different working conditions but also between working conditions and these work outcomes. Therefore, I think it's fair to say that we really have a quite impressive and very complete snapshot of what working life was like in 2021. It's a representative survey and it is a fully harmonised survey, which means we can also compare with a good feeling and with merit between the results of different Member States.
00:03:21 Mary McCaughey
And how many people, respondents in total are we talking about, Barbara?
00:03:24 Barbara Gerstenberger
72,000 people who responded to that survey.
00:03:27 Mary McCaughey
OK, all of them with jobs and responding as workers within a company or an organisation?
00:03:32 Barbara Gerstenberger
Absolutely. Employees and self-employed, both categories.
00:03:36 Mary McCaughey
OK. The pandemic put the spotlight on frontline workers and those that were carrying out the kind of work that was really essential during that period. Often, they were in the healthcare sector, but not always;: the service industry, supply chains, education, public sector. Can we talk a little bit about what we have seen in terms of what their job quality has been during this period in comparison to other workers?
00:04:02 Barbara Gerstenberger
One of the key messages of this survey and when analysing the data is that, yes, we were in the pandemic together, but we experienced it in very different ways, and which sector and which occupation we worked in made a huge difference. So, frontline workers in the majority of cases were not able to work from home. That meant they were much more exposed to the risk of catching the virus than you and me, who were sitting in the comfort of our own home, at the kitchen table, in a much safer environment. So, that was the first big difference.
Then they also experienced, compared to other groups, a very high level of work intensity. They experienced very harsh physical demands, moving heavy loads, moving people, etc. connected with these conditions. Long hours were more prevalent among frontline workers than in other groups. Working at night was more prevalent and, as a result, then, poorer work-life balance, more work-life conflicts, not being able to switch off, still thinking about work and work problems when you were already at home, or simply feeling way too exhausted to do anything at home, housework, caring for children, etc. So, that characterises this group of frontline workers.
On the positive side, they experienced support from colleagues more regularly, more often than those in other groups. But, for me, maybe the most striking finding is that even though more than 90% of frontline workers felt that they were doing something useful (unsurprisingly, I would argue) and almost 908% said that they had the feeling of doing work well done, two- thirds of them said they received the recognition they deserved, but one third, more than 30%, said ‘we did not’, ‘we do not feel we got the recognition for the work we're doing’. That is shocking, I find, because those were the people who kept society going and we were not giving them recognition for the harsh conditions and the fantastic work they did.
00:06:23 Mary McCaughey
So, we were clapping for them on the doorstep, but, for whatever reason, they did not feel that, they did not feel themselves to be seen or visible in that way. I mean, that comes on to the different elements of the job quality framework, in a way, the elements that are included there. One of them is this sense of purpose and, I suppose, the meaning of work and meaningfulness of work. What's the interplay between that and other aspects, like pay, for example, or autonomy?
00:07:01 Barbara Gerstenberger
Yes, that's quite interesting. I think the starting point is to realise and recognise that job quality is multi-dimensional. So, that makes it difficult to measure it. That's one thing. But, also, you could have a situation where some aspects, like, for example, pay is very good, but hours are long, work intensity is high and you experience this complete exhaustion at the end of the working day. So, I would argue that is not a good job. You could also have a situation where working time is fine, pay is fine, but I really do not see how what I am doing is useful. I never leave work or hardly ever leave work with the feeling of ‘work well done, did a good job today’, and that gets to you. Something is missing and it is an important dimension of job quality, we call it intrinsic rewards, that is missing. And I think during the pandemic, more and more workers focused more, tuned in on this: ‘What is missing here, and do I have all these different dimensions that I would expect in a job?’ ‘Do I really experience that?’
00:08:11 Mary McCaughey
That's fascinating, Barbara, and do you think that we will see that carrying through post-pandemic?
00:08:16 Barbara Gerstenberger
I would argue yes, because it is such an important dimension, and also for this dimension we see a direct link to health and well-being outcomes. So, workers do recognise that if this particular aspect is missing, that will, certainly in the longer term, have an impact on my general level of well-being and maybe even health. A and that is something that more and more workers are no longer willing to accept.
00:08:48 Mary McCaughey
But, in a way, we also agree that the ratio of these different indices, indicators, they are not the same always at the same time, they would change during different periods and different people's lives. Would that be correct?
00:09:04 Barbara Gerstenberger
That's certainly correct. You probably start out in a job with full enthusiasm. It is the first job, it's the first pay. Who cares whether it really is already the job I have dreamt of. But, as you go along, as you also see probably classmates, friends move into jobs that give them more of this kind of intrinsic reward and satisfaction, attitudes do start to change.
00:09:31 Mary McCaughey
In terms of the concept that's used to describe that, with the Working Conditions Telephone Survey, you're using the concept of job strain. Now, that can be not entirely intuitive to people. Would you just give us an idea of what that actually means for the lay man and woman, if you like.
00:09:52 Barbara Gerstenberger
So, we talked about these different dimensions of job quality and another way to think about it is that in your job you are faced with certain demands, things that exhaust you. It can be hard physical work, but it can also be emotional demands, like having to hide your feelings or discrimination. Intimidation is also a form of emotional demand. So, you experience these demands in your job. That's perfectly normal.
But you also have resources that can balance these demands – for example, the support of colleagues; you have a high workload, but you can count on the support of your colleagues or of your boss. You have flexible working time arrangements which make it easier to, if needs be, you can slip out, you can take care of family issues, for example, and come back. So, these are resources that can balance the demands that we see.
Now, it is possible – and that's what we've done in that survey, analysing the data – it is possible for each job to establish whether the resources outnumber the demands, and then you have a resourced job, a good job; or, is it the other way around and you have more demands than resources, and then you are in a strained job. The big issue here is that being in a strained job has implications for health and well-being and, again, we can see that in the data that we collected. If you look at scores for well-being – we have a scale from 0 to 100 – you can see that well-being scores for those in extremely strained jobs are about one- third lower than for those in well-resourced jobs. So, the one category, extremely strained aon average of 47, those in well-resourced jobs an average of 74. Big difference, one- third difference and that, I think, illustrates quite well the strong link between strain in the job and well-being outcomes.
00:12:03 Mary McCaughey
So, bad jobs make you sick?
00:12:06 Barbara Gerstenberger
Basically, that’s it. Exactly.
00:12:07 Mary McCaughey
And the bad jobs don't only make you sick, and they're not good for your well-being, but you've talked before about them having even broader societal implications. What do you think those implications could be?
00:12:20 Barbara Gerstenberger
Well, if we start with these negative impacts for health and well-being, if you accumulate health problems – backaches, headaches, emotional exhaustion, anxiety – combine that with low well-being, you're not very likely to stay in your job until retirement age. You're not very likely to return do to your job after a period of illness, for example. In a situation of demographic ageing, in a situation of skills and labour shortages, we simply can't afford this as a society, to lose this human capital. We need these people, so that is a very, very strong argument for improving their job quality.
00:13:04 Mary McCaughey
And I suppose, Barbara, as well, just to intervene there, it's not just about the workplace, it's not just about the long-term sustainability of work. It's also how that impacts on your quality of life at home, with your family, with the society within which you engage. I presume it has implications for that also.
00:13:23 Barbara Gerstenberger
Absolutely. It has implications on, for example, work-life balance, the energy you still have, caring for children, caring for dependents, but also the ability of us as a society to tackle challenges in the economic sphere but also outside of the economic sphere. Think about the transition to a more digital world, to a low-carbon economy. For that, we need good levels of trust in companies, good levels of cooperation, an engaged workforce. A and, again, poor job quality is linked to lower levels of trust, is linked to less cooperation, is linked to less engagement, and that means we will not have the tools to tackle the challenges that we are facing in this ever- changing world.
00:14:14 Mary McCaughey
The challenges we know, but also the challenges we don't. And that's, I suppose, something we need to keep very much front of mind in these times of disruption and slight chaos. In terms of women, and we do always come back to this issue of gender, we know that gender segregation remains. We know there's a gender pay gap still ongoing. We know that an awful lot of the gender equality gains have been rolled back over this last period. To what extent does gender play a role in terms of job quality?
00:14:47 Barbara Gerstenberger
Well, the gender segregation is the starting point and I just want to repeat the figures because we might think this has changed, but it hasn't. If you look at the sectoral level, only 40% of workers work in a gender-balanced sector and the sector is gender-balanced if not more than 60% are either men or women. Go to the occupational level: only 25% of workers work in gender-mixed occupations. Go to the workplace level: it's even lower, only 20% of workers work in workplaces with a gender balance, with a good gender mix. But that means, because, of course, sectors and occupations provide different types of working conditions – physical demands are higher in the construction sector, that is male-dominated job, emotional demands are higher in the health sector, that is a female-dominated sector – so you will see these differences perpetuate themselves. You will see different impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, of the change to a green economy, of digitalisation, on men and women simply because they're not in the same type of jobs. As long as we have this segregation, we will not close the gaps, we will not diminish those differences.
00:16:18 Mary McCaughey
Address the issues, yes. And in fact, that's a takeaway, that the multidimensional nature of these issues is one of the biggest challenges that faces the area of job quality and addressing the issues in terms of improving job quality.
00:16:36 Barbara Gerstenberger
It's a big challenge, but it's also a big opportunity, because if job quality is multi-dimensional, we have so many different levers that we can apply and use. So, if it is about improving job quality, we could, for example, focus, on the one hand, on reducing the demands, looking at working time, looking at work intensity, etc., but we could also look at improving the resources at workers’ disposal. These are things like training, learning on the job, but also participation in decision-making, in deciding about how work is organised in a company. So, we have these two big strands that we can follow – and within these strands, lots and lots of different opportunities, because it is so multi-dimensional.
00:17:27 Mary McCaughey
Absolutely. And as you say, there are many levers and very many options. But, if you were to say from your perspective, perhaps the primary challenge that you think we are facing in terms of improving overall job quality, what would it be?
00:17:40 Barbara Gerstenberger
Well, for the primary challenge, I would argue what we need to address is the fact that we have 30% of our workers in strained jobs and 12% of them even in very strained and extremely strained jobs, and that's not sustainable. So, we need to focus on this group of workers. That, I think, is the most important message when it comes to improving job quality. Focus on those who are in strained jobs.
00:18:12 Mary McCaughey
Focus on those that are in strained jobs. So, that is your overarching challenge if you like. But if I were to ask you to talk to me in three – I am your policymaker – what would you put on the table as the three main issues to take on board tackling this issue of improving job quality?
00:18:32 Barbara Gerstenberger
That's a great opportunity. My first point: don't lose sight of the physical hazards of work. OK, we are seeing that those dull, dirty, dangerous jobs are really diminishing in number, but, still, 70% of the respondents in our survey said that they were having to do repetitive hand and arm movements every day. 50% said they work in tiring and painful positions. These are the factors that lead to musculoskeletal disorders, which is a huge problem. We also need to take into account that, right now, we are moving away from workplaces that are at the employer’s premises only; the home very often becomes the workplace. What are the conditions there, the economic setup of workplaces, etc.? So, physical hazards are still a big problem. Do not lose sight of that.
Second point, get to grips with psychosocial risks, which are increasing. Just to mention one more figure from the 2021 survey, 1 in 10 workers experienced intimidation at the workplace in the months previous to the survey, and this possibility is increasing because we have more and more jobs where workers are dealing with clients, with pupils, with patients directly, so psychosocial risks will increase and we need to find a way to deal with that and manage that and reduce this risk.
My last point, then, my third point is that we need to make the link between job quality and labour shortages. It is, of course, important to address the skills gap that contributes to labour shortages, but the ability to attract workers with the right skills to the jobs where we need them will depend on the job quality that these jobs offer.
00:20:32 Mary McCaughey
Thank you, Barbara. The dull, dirty, dangerous jobs are diminishing but still need to be a focus of our attention. Psychosocial risks need to be addressed if we're going to take on this challenge, and we need to maintain an awareness, particularly into the future, of the link between addressing job quality and ensuring that we close the gap on labour shortages. Barbara, as always, an absolute pleasure. Thank you very much for joining us today here on Eurofound Talks. You can find more on this, indeed, on telework in the podcast that we carried out with Oscar recently. We also had an episode where we looked at care with our colleague Hans. In terms of working conditions, the report on the European Working Conditions Telephone Survey is out now on our website, alongside Barbara’s blog, which talks about how pivotal changes in job quality are to addressing the challenges that we have both in society and the workplace. You can follow us on social media channels, as always, and on the Eurofound website for more on the EWCTS and working conditions in general. Until next time, until Eurofound talks to you.
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