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和繁荣的社会。2017年，政府委托进行了“好工作：泰勒现代工作实践评估”，公众的关注达到了顶峰。《泰勒评论》的一项重要建议是，除了其他建议外，政府应该采用一个多维度的“好工作”定义。基于几十年的学术研究，证明了他们与工作相关的幸福感之间的关系，泰勒评论确定了六个维度是“好工作”的核心（DBEIS 2017: 12）（工资，就业质量，教育和培训，工作条件，工作与生活的平衡，以及协商参与/集体代表）。这个SDAI项目的总体目标是通过应用社会学分层理论的见解，探索一种职业方法来绘制、理解和提高工作生活的质量。社会学分层理论表明，实现与工作相关的高幸福感的能力在很大程度上取决于工作的职业领域。然而，这一问题的研究却很少。在职业结构中，工作质量和与工作相关的幸福感在多大程度上是理解和发展改善工作生活质量的途径的关键问题，例如，通过职业流动性或可能缓和职业环境影响的工作场所实践。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职业分类模式）并不打算以多维方式映射工作质量定义，因此往往只关注单一的工作质量维度。需要一种更适合当前学术和政策背景的工具。此外，现有的稀疏研究结果表明，无论如何，工作质量的维度和与工作相关的幸福感的衡量标准都不能整齐地映射到职业类别上。推动本提案的具体研究问题是：1。“职业素质”的结构是什么？职业质量如何影响个体在生命历程中的主观幸福感？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？工作场所在多大程度上调节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。将在一系列国家和国际会议上分享新发现，并从这些会议上收集反馈，以及与有针对性的学术专家一起举办的专家研讨会，以确保最大限度地发挥学术影响。我们的SDAI项目的一个独特部分是其在学术界之外的影响策略。在BEIS部门（负责实施政府工作质量战略的部门）和CIPD（人力资源专业的专业团体，在工作质量辩论中一直处于领先地位）的支持下，我们将把我们的研究结果传达给政策和从业者（见支持信）。这包括一系列政策和实务人员工作坊，以及我们的研究成果的简单英文简介，将在计划网站（www.qualityofworkinglife.org）上举办。我们还将招募一家设计机构，为我们将从ESRC数据中产生的职业质量数据准备可搜索和图形演示。该项目网站也将主办短视频事实，我们将制作，总结每篇论文。总的来说，这些策略将确保在工作质量问题从未如此紧迫的时候产生最大的影响，并最大化现有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.