Arbeitszufriedenheit im internationalen Vergleich
The purpose of this paper is to compare the extent and determinants of employees’ job satisfaction on a European level. The underlying data originate from the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) 2005 covering 31 European countries. Beside detailed information about type of work and working conditions the data account for personal and household characteristics including objective and subjective income measures. The result from Ordered-probit regressions for all 31 countries as well as separate regressions for five groups of countries (clustered with respect to level of welfare and type of welfare state) indicate a diversified pattern of explanation of job satisfaction. For all analyzed countries except for countries in Scandinavia and continental Europe the employees’ subjective evaluation of income appears to have the strongest effect on job satisfaction. Considering the conflict of working hours with private life, the negative effect on job satisfaction is less distinctive in countries with a lower welfare level. Job security is found to have a stronger impact for UK and Ireland, whereas work autonomy is only found to be among the top ten influences for high level welfare states (UK, Ireland, continental Europe, and Scandinavia).
Impact of Working Hours on Work-Life Balance
To examine the influence of working hours on employees' satisfaction, this article uses a large, representative set of panel data from German households (GSOEP). The results show that high working hours and overtime in general do not lead to decreased satisfaction. Rather, increasing working hours and overtime have positive effects on life and job satisfaction, whereas the desire to reduce working hours has a negative impact on satisfaction. In 2009, nearly 60% of employees wanted to reduce their working hours. The overall number of hours by which employees want to reduce their working time is driven mainly by overtime compensation.
Examining working time arrangements using time use survey data
Acknowledgements This paper was produced as a report for the International Labour Office, the secretariat of the International Labour Organization, and is a working paper for the Conditions of Work Branch. We thank the ILO for initiating as well as funding this research into core and non-core working hours. We also thank Eivind Hoffmann at the ILO for offering detailed comments on earlier drafts of this work. ii Abstract This paper uses full-record time diary data from six studies to analyse daily schedules of individual work time patterns. The work schedules are based on the combination of regular paid work, overtime work, second jobs, and any reported informal paid activity. We define work episodes as single occurrences of paid work activity separated by 60 or more minutes from any other paid work episodes. The reference work episode was the one that occurred during " core " hours, which were defined as 8:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. for Canada and Netherlands, and as 7:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. for Norway and Sweden. These " core " time definitions were based upon the frequencies of start and end-times of work episodes. Work episodes were calculated for all days, including weekend days. We identified seven theoretical work time arrangements possible during a day for each individual with reference to the core working hours. These classifications of work time arrangements extend from early morning to late night with three classifications being single arrangements and four being multiple and overlapping arrangements. Empirically these arrangements, in combination, generated 10 workday patterns for individuals. We found vast, though as yet statistically untested, differences in work time arrangements across countries and by sex. In general, men tended to be relatively evenly distributed over the work time arrangements defined for a typical day, while women tended to work a single episode during core hours only. 2/3 of Canadian and Swedish men worked at least some time outside core hours, while nearly half of Dutch and Norwegian men only worked during the core period. Women in Sweden worked a wider range of hours than women in the other three countries. Where possible, this paper explores relations between other aspects of working arrangements and the timing of paid work episodes. We found a strong relationship between the scheduling and the duration of paid work. People who worked both pre-core to core and core to post-core episodes worked the longest hours, while …