8 Principles that Constitute the Quality of Working Life as Mentioned by Walton (2024)

Some say improvement in working conditions would lead to better quality of life, while others feel a fair compensation and job security would lead to better quality of life. Walton mentioned the following eight principles that constitute the quality of working life:

1. Adequate and fair compensation

This implies a just and fair balance between effort and reward. It includes proper job evaluation, training to perform the job, ability of the organisation to pay and profit- sharing. In India, the Minimum Wages Act, 1948 was passed to prevent the exploitation of labour and the Payment of Wages Act, 193 6 was passed to prevent unauthorised deduction of wages.

2. Safe and healthy working conditions

To improve the quality of working life, the work environment should be congenial and free from hazards detrimental to health and safety of workers. Reasonable working hours, zero-risk, physical conditions of work and age restrictions on lower side ensures good work environment. In India, in the Factories Act 1948, there is adequate provision for health, safety and welfare of workers.

3. Immediate opportunity to use and develop human capacities

The factory work today has become repetitive, fragmented and lifeless. The workers respond mechanically to the demands of machine without much control on them. Quality of working life will be improved if the job allows sufficient autonomy and control.

A job has five characteristics,

(i) Skill variety:

The degree to which a job requires a variety of different activities, so that one can use a number of different skills,

(ii) Task identity:

The degree to which the job requires completion of a whole and identifiable piece of work,

(iii) Task significance:

The degree to which the job has a substantial impact on the lives of other people,

(iv) Autonomy:

The degree to which the job provides substantial freedom independence and discretion to the individual in scheduling the work and in determining the procedures to be used in carrying it out,

(v) Feedback:

The degree to which carrying out the work activities required by the job, results in the individual obtaining direct and clear information about the effectiveness of his performance.

The first three dimensions skill variety, task identity and task significance combine to create the work meaningful, important and worthwhile. Jobs that possess autonomy give the worker a feeling of personal responsibility for the results and if a job provides feedback, the worker will know how effectively he is performing.

4. Opportunity for continued growth and security

Here the focus is on career opportunities as against the job. What type of opportunities are available to develop new abilities and Skills to avoid obsolescence? The employee is eager to know whether the newly acquired skill could be put to some use and thereby lead to personal growth and security.

5. Social integration in the work organisation

One of the objectives of quality of working life is to generate satisfying identity with the organisation and develop a feeling of self-esteem. The factors which inculcate these feelings are openness and trust, opportunity for upward mobility, a sense of community feeling on the job and equal opportunity for all irrespective of caste, creed, sex and religion.

6. Constitutionalisation in the work organisation

The governance by the Rule of Law is necessary to improve the quality of working life.

7. Work and the total life span

The demands of the work life late hours, frequent travel and transfers are socially very costly to the employee and his family. Such events definitely depress the quality of working life.

8. The social relevance of work life

The organisation’s lack of concern for social responsibilities like low quality products, disregard for pollution, bad employment practices, make workers depreciate the value of work which in turn affects their self-esteem.

In the past, the traditional approach to human resources development had been through training of employees. But training of individuals plays a limited role on developing people. People develop not only through better training but also through the way the organisation works.

The job or the role the person has in the organisation also determines to what extent the person will be able to develop. HRD has to take both role and the job into account.

The concept of quality of working life thus includes emphasis on extrinsic and intrinsic job factors and other aspects like individual power, employee participation in the management process, fairness and equity, social support, use of one’s present skills, self-development, a meaningful future at work and social relevance of the work.

Now we shall discuss different operational systems through which the concept of quality of working life manifests itself.