Mapping the Quality of Working Life in Britain: An Occupational Approach

虽然英国的就业率达到了创纪录的水平，但人们普遍担心，许多工作的质量不足以维持一个健康繁荣的社会。公众日益增长的担忧最终导致政府在2017年委托开展了《好工作：泰勒现代工作实践回顾》。《泰勒评论》的一项关键建议是，除了其他建议外，政府应该采用多维的定义来定义好的工作。几十年来的学术研究证明了工作幸福感与工作幸福感之间的关系，在此基础上，《泰勒评论》确定了六个维度，即工资、就业质量、教育和培训、工作条件、工作与生活平衡以及协商参与/集体代表。这一SDAI项目的总体目标是探索一种职业方法，通过应用社会学分层理论的见解来绘制、理解和提高工作生活质量，这些理论表明，实现高工作幸福感的能力在很大程度上取决于职业-工作领域。然而，这一问题却鲜有人研究。工作质量和与工作相关的幸福感在职业结构中的结构程度是理解和开发提高工作生活质量的途径的关键问题，例如，通过职业流动或工作场所实践，可能会缓和职业环境的影响。为此，我们建议创建一个新的职业质量分类(CoQ)。这是因为现有的职业分类(如国家统计局使用的NS-SEC职业分类方案)并不是为了映射以多维方式定义的工作质量，因此往往只侧重于单一的工作质量方面。需要一种更适合当前学术和政策背景的工具。此外，现有稀少的研究结果表明，工作质量的维度和与工作相关的幸福感的测量在任何情况下都不能很好地映射到职业类别。激励这一建议的具体研究问题是：1.职业质量的结构是什么？2.职业质量如何影响个人在整个生命过程中的主观幸福感？3.跨职业质量结构的流动性是提高工作生活质量的有效手段吗？4.工作场所在多大程度上缓和了职业质量对工作质量和幸福感的影响？利用现有的ESRC数据，我们将通过撰写并将结果提交给四家世界级学术期刊来回答这些问题。新的发现将在一系列国内和国际会议上分享，并将从一系列国内和国际会议上收集反馈，以及与目标学术专家的专家研讨会，以确保最大的学术影响。我们SDAI项目的一个独特部分是其超越学术界的影响战略。在BEIS部门(负责实施政府工作质量战略的部门)和CIPD(人力资源行业的专业团体，在工作质量辩论中一直是主要声音)的支持下，我们将把我们的调查结果传达给政策和实践者受众(见支持函)。这包括一系列政策和实践者讲习班，以及我们研究成果的简明英语简报，将在项目网站(www.qualityofworkinglife.org)上主持。我们还将聘请一家设计机构来准备我们将从ESRC数据中产生的职业质量数据的可搜索和图形演示。该项目网站还将托管我们将制作的短视频事实，总结每篇论文。总的来说，这些战略将确保在工作质量问题从未如此紧迫的时候产生最大影响，并最大限度地实现现有ESRC投资的回报。

While employment in Britain is at record levels, there is widespread concern many jobs are not of sufficient quality to maintain a healthy and thriving society. Growing public concern culminated in the government commissioning the 'Good work: The Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices' in 2017. A key recommendation of the Taylor Review was that the government should adopt a multidimensional definition of 'good work', among other recommendations. Building upon decades of academic research demonstrating their relationship with job-related wellbeing, the Taylor Review identified six dimensions as central to 'good work' (DBEIS 2017: 12) (wages, employment quality, education and training, working conditions, work-life balance, and consultative participation/collective representation).The overall objective of this SDAI project is to explore an occupational approach to mapping, understanding, and improving the quality of working life by applying insights from sociological theories of stratification which suggest that the capacity to achieve high job-related wellbeing is to a large extent determined by occupation-field of work. However, this issue has been scarcely researched. The extent to which job quality and job-related wellbeing are structured across the occupational structure are critical issues to understanding and developing pathways to improving the quality of working life, for instance, through occupational mobility or workplace practices that might moderate the effect of occupational environment.We propose creating a new Classification of Occupational Quality (COQ) for this purpose. This is because existing occupational classifications (such as the NS-SEC occupational class schema used by the ONS) were not intended to map job quality defined in a multidimensional way, and as such tended to focus on only a single job quality dimension. A more appropriate tool for the current academic and policy context is necessary. Moreover, the sparse existing research findings suggest that dimensions of job quality and measures of job-related wellbeing do not neatly map onto occupational classes in any case.The specific research questions motivating this proposal are:1. What is the structure of 'occupational quality'?2. How does occupational quality influence individuals' subjective wellbeing over the life course?3. Is mobility across occupational quality structure an effective means of improving the quality of working life?4. To what extent does the workplace moderate the effect of occupational quality on job quality and wellbeing?Using existing ESRC data, we will answer these questions through writing-up and submitting the results to four world-class academic journals. Emerging findings will be shared at, and feedback will be gathered from a range of national and international conferences, as well as specialist workshops with targeted academic experts to ensure maximum academic impact.A distinctive part of our SDAI project is its impact strategy beyond academia. With the support of the Dept BEIS (the department responsible for implementing the government's job quality strategy) and the CIPD (the professional body of the HR profession who have been a leading voice in the job quality debate), we will channel our findings to policy and practitioner audiences (see Letter of Support). This includes a series of policy and practitioner workshops, as well as plain English briefings of our research outputs, to be hosted on the project website (www.qualityofworkinglife.org). We will also enlist a design agency to prepare searchable and graphical presentations of occupational quality data we will produce from ESRC data. The project website will also host short video factuals which we will produce, summarising each paper. Collectively, these strategies will ensure maximum impact at a time when the issue of job quality has never been so pressing as well as maximising return on existing ESRC investments.