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A major question for governments is how to reshape the teaching profession and make teaching an attractive career choice for today's youth. A close examination of the organization and management of teacher careers can provide useful insights into how to make teaching more appealing as a career. A number of countries have reformed their teacher career structures over the past decades, and others foresee introducing changes in the near future. To benefit from their experience, between 2016 and 2018 IIEP looked into the organization and management of teacher careers in Colombia, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Lithuania, Mexico, New York City, Peru, Scotland, South Africa, and Thailand. The research findings aim to provide policy-makers and governments with a variety of options with regard to the design of teacher careers, highlighting management implications as well as perceived effects of teacher career reforms on teacher motivation, attraction, and retention. This brief is part of a series of four. It analyses the main drivers behind teacher career reforms and presents emerging models of career organization.

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This paper operationalises the OECD Guidelines for Measuring the Quality of the Working Environment (OECD, 2017) to describe job characteristics among European countries, the United States and Korea in 2010 and 2015. The analysis extends the range of aspects of quality of the working environment beyond those featuring in the Job Strain index presented by (Cazes, 2015), which is used to monitor implementation of the OECD Job Strategy, but at the cost of a more limited country coverage. While the two indices of job strain are largely consistent both across countries and over time, all of the job characteristics included in the 'extended' index turns out to matter for workers' well-being. The framework uses the job demands-resources model (Demerouti, 2001) that stresses the importance of balancing the demands of the job and the resources that are available to workers to meet those demands. Workers are classified as (heavily) strained when the number of job demands they face (largely) exceeds the number of job resources they benefit from, and conversely, they are classified as (very) well-resourced when their job resources (largely) exceed their job demands.

On average among 28 OECD countries, about one third of employees are (moderately or heavily) strained at work, while one half are well-resourced. The share of employees that are heavily strained is close to 10 per cent. Job strain is relatively more frequent among employees with low education and low occupational skills, and it is relatively less frequent in the service sector and in the public sector. Due to composition effects, women hold on average slightly less strained jobs than men. The share of strained workers has slightly declined on average over the 2010-2015 period, falling in a majority of countries. The improvement in working conditions is related to better prospects of career advancement, higher take-up of training, stronger social support and organisational participation at work, higher flexibility of working time, as well as lower exposure to physical risk factors, hard physical demands and unsocial work schedule. On the other hand, perceptions of job insecurity, intimidation and discrimination, as well as work intensity have been on the rise. Finally, quality of the working environment is strongly associated with workers' well-being as measured by mental and physical health, days of sickness, job satisfaction as well as job motivation, and the associated effects are potentially large. For most outcomes, perceived intimidation and discrimination at work is one of the most powerful predictor of workers' well-being.

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This paper uses the fourth European Working Conditions Survey (2005) to address the impact of age on work-related self-reported health outcomes. More specifically, the paper examines whether older workers differ significantly from younger workers regarding their job-related health risk perception, mental and physical health, sickness absence, probability of reporting injury and fatigue. Accounting for the 'healthy worker effect', or sample selection - in so far as unhealthy workers are likely to exit the labour force - we find that as a group, those aged 55-65 years are more 'vulnerable' than younger workers: they are more likely to perceive work-related health and safety risks, and to report mental, physical and fatigue health problems. As previously shown, older workers are more likely to report work-related absence.

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This study is an analysis of 24 variables associated with employee attitudes, behaviors and outcomes. A total of 140 college graduates participated in the study. Utilizing exploratory factor analysis (EFA) techniques, the research examined relationships among the following variables: perceived fit, job satisfaction, cognitive ability, vocational personality, academic achievement and gender. Components were extracted using Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and orthogonally rotated resulting in three component solution. A simple, interpretable structure was revealed, demonstrating a strong but differentially related association among three forms of perceived fit and facet level job satisfaction. The person-trait variables in the study were minimally related to perceived fit and satisfaction.

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This collection of research articles on the quality of life in the workplace focus on 'how to be happy at work'. Based on research begun by the editors in 1994, the volume explores the idea of meaningful work by describing how individuals can master their job duties, maintain good relationships with colleagues and management and create value in products and services. Also provided is a questionnaire for measuring the quality of working life, based on a theory of quality of working life.

The contents are as follows: Introduction; Part one, 'Understanding quality of working life: how to be happy at work', contains: Working life / Soren Ventegodt and Joav Merrick; Quality of life, happiness and meaning of life / Soren Ventegodt, Niels Jorgen Andersen, Isack Kandel and Joav Merrick; Personal quality of life / Soren Ventegodt, Niels Jorgen Andersen, Isack Kandel and Joav Merrick; Mastery in your work / Soren Ventegodt, Niels Jorgen Andersen, Isack Kandel and Joav Merrick; Working with colleagues and management / Soren Ventegodt, Niels Jorgen Andersen, Isack Kandel and Joav Merrick; Creating value / Soren Ventegodt, Niels Jorgen Andersen, Isack Kandel and Joav Merrick; Up - or down in your life? / Soren Ventegodt, Niels Jorgen Andersen, Isack Kandel and Joav Merrick; How to improve working-life quality, quality of life and health / Soren Ventegodt, Niels Jorgen Andersen, Isack Kandel, Lars Enevoldsen and Joav Merrick. Part two, 'Research in quality of working life: improving value by making your people happy at work', contains: Working life quality and value / Soren Ventegodt, Niels Jorgen Andersen, Isack Kandel and Joav Merrick; Working life quality with the [self evaluation of quality of working life] SEQWL questionnaire / Soren Ventegodt, Niels Jorgen Andersen and Joav Merrick; Antonovsky salutogenesis [an approach focusing on factors that support human health and well-being] related to work / Soren Ventegodt, Isack Kandel and Joav Merrick; Mood disorders and suicide / Jong-Min Woo and Teodor T. Postolache. Part three, 'Travelling and inspiration for development as leader', contains: Travel and shift work / Tatiana Menick and Teodor T. Postolache; Reflections / Lars Enevoldsen. Part four, 'Acknowledgements', contains: Publications on quality of life 1994-2008 from an international group of collaborators / Soren Ventegodt and Joav Merrick; About the Quality of Life Research Center in Copenhagen; About the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Israel. Show less

Nursing and midwifery are priority professions for which there are current and future (projected) workforce shortages. This study takes a work-life perspective to examine the key workplace factors that impact on retention and well-being. Two qualitative studies are described. Study one explores the meaning of work-life interaction for these professionals, to inform the focus and emphasis of policy and practice initiatives. Study two presents an in-depth examination of five key issues: work scheduling, workload, accessing leave, child-care and casual work. It was clear that nursing and midwifery was a significant source of meaning, purpose and satisfaction in workers' lives. However, the potential for high levels of work-life conflict and negative spillover of stress into non-work-life was very evident. The paper concludes with a summary of recommendations to improve administrative, procedural and cultural aspects of nursing and midwifery work to support and enhance work-life interaction and well-being.

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Achieving a just digital and green transition is at the heart of the European Union's policy ambitions. The [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the digital transformation, abruptly transforming the way we live, work and learn. The digital transition is all around us, but not all workers benefit equally. Many are not exposed to digital technology or are employed in low-skilled, routine and non-complex jobs. This report presents evidence from Cedefop's second European skills and jobs survey (ESJS2), covering over 46,000 adult workers in 29 European countries.

It illustrates the impact of the pandemic, maps the use of different types of digital technology and reflects on their implications for changing tasks, skill needs and skill mismatches. The wealth of new evidence supports the EU's digital and skills agendas and their ambitious targets. In this report Cedefop makes the case for placing worker wellbeing and quality jobs at the core of Europe's digital transition.

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The aim of the article is to propose a job quality composite indicator (JQCI) by which to measure the quality of young graduates' jobs. [The authors] design [the] JQCI by grouping jobs' objective and perceived characteristics into three dimensions: (1) economic; (2) professional; and (3) work-life balance, following a theory-driven approach and weighting each dimension according to its importance. [The authors] apply the resulting JQCI to a sample of Italian graduates three years after graduation and validate it by measuring their motivation to leave their jobs, assuming that poor quality could be a reason to want to leave a job. [The authors] find that the professional dimension scores the highest. Relevant differences in job quality are related to individual (gender, degree level, disciplinary field, whether the graduate worked while studying), and organizational characteristics (company size). Implications for policy-makers and for firms interested in attracting and retaining Generation Y workers are discussed.

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The opening of the Indian economy in the early 1990s and the consequent changes in the environment have forced Indian organisations to look for better avenues of performance improvement, resulting in a changed perspective for Human Resource Development (HRD) activities in organisations. The emphasis now is more on a wholesale development, which means a more integrated approach towards HRD. This has led to the introduction of organised activities designed to foster increased knowledge, skills, competencies and better behaviours. It is said that the factors of satisfaction are real contributors in the motivation of employees and, in turn, may contribute in reducing employee turnover. In this context, HRD aims at developing the motivation of the employees to the extent possible, to make them contribute to the organisational goals. Since job satisfaction is a correlate of the organisational climate, a healthy climate is required for utilising and enhancing the employees’ competencies and skills. The present study is an attempt to explore the HRD climate level in Manufacturing (Pharmaceutical industry) and Service (banking industry) industries and the relationship with job satisfaction.

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We use data from a nationally representative Australian household panel survey to examine the extent and nature of self-reported job discrimination, its correlates, and its associations with various employment outcomes and measures of subjective wellbeing. We find that approximately 8.5 per cent of job applicants and 7.5 per cent of employees report being discriminated against in the preceding two years, most commonly on the basis of their age. Gender is found to be a common factor predicting perceived discrimination in both job applications and in the course of employment, but the determinants of these two types of discrimination are otherwise somewhat different. In particular, age is a significant determinant of perceived discrimination in job applications only, while being a mother of young children is a significant factor only for discrimination in the course of employment. We also find that, holding other traits constant, ethnic and religious minorities are not significantly more likely to perceive they have been discriminated against. Little evidence of adverse effects of perceived job discrimination is found for wage levels, wage changes and the probability of promotion, but we find large negative effects on subjective outcomes such as job satisfaction and self-assessed probability of job loss.

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