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Most taxonomies of 'good jobs' and 'bad jobs' are centred around pay and hours of work. This paper uses information on 7000 workers in OECD countries (emanating from the 1989 wave of the International Social Survey Programme) to complement traditional measures of job quality with worker-supplied information regarding a wide variety of characteristics of the current job. The responses to twenty different questions are collapsed into six summary variables measuring workers' evaluations of: pay; hours of work; future prospects (promotion and job security); how hard or difficult the job is; job content: interest, prestige and independence; and Interpersonal relationships (with co-workers and with management). An advantage of asking workers about these job attributes is that many of them, such as interpersonal relationships, job interest and job difficulty, are not measurable in the way that income and hours are. Another is that items may not have a linear relationship may not have a linear relationship with job quality: a 35 hour per week job may be too long for some and too short for others; there is no way of knowing without actually asking the workers concerned.

The first part of the report looks at workers' values. In this sample of 7000 workers, pay is said to be one of the least important job characteristics. On the contrary, the most important facets are said to be job security and whether the job is interesting. These rankings are very consistent across gender and country. The last part of the report considers the relation between job quality variables and job satisfaction. Regression analysis shows that overall job satisfaction is strongly correlated with all of the job quality measures: as such it acts as a useful summary measure of a number of job characteristics that are typically not observed. Breaking down this analysis by sex and by age, it can be shown that job satisfaction is more strongly correlated with income for men, and more strongly correlated with hours of work for women, that hard or difficult work is not correlated with younger workers' job satisfaction, and that income becomes more important with age whereas promotion opportunities become less important.

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The OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) is the largest international survey asking teachers and school leaders about their working conditions and learning environments, and provides a barometer of the profession every five years. Results from the 2018 cycle explore and examine the various dimensions of teacher and school leader professionalism across education systems. In Australia, a nationally representative sample of 4,000 teachers and principals from 200 lower secondary schools was randomly selected to participate in the study. Findings from TALIS 2018 in Australia are reported in two volumes. The first volume, 'Teachers and school leaders as lifelong learners', published in November 2019, explored teaching practices, the changing contexts for teaching and the knowledge and skills dimensions of professionalism for teachers and school leaders. The second volume, 'Teachers and school leaders as valued professionals', published in August 2020, explores the prestige and standing of the profession, the security, flexibility and reward structures of teaching and school leadership careers, the extent of professional collaboration and collegial relations within schools, and the degree of autonomy and leadership that teachers and school leaders have in their jobs. The primary focus of these reports is the responses from lower-secondary teachers and school leaders. Data for primary teachers, where available and appropriate, is also included.

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Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to develop a theoretical framework for measuring public sector managers' career success. Design/methodology/approach - The theoretical foundation used in this study is social cognitive career theory. To conduct a literature search, several keywords were identified, i.e. career success, objective and subjective career success, managers, managerial career development and social cognitive career theory. Several electronic databases available in the university's library, such as Emerald, EBSCOHost, SAGE, Science Direct and Blackwell Synergy, were used to search for resources. Literature includes sources written in both English and Malay. Findings - The four factors that have predictive potential on managers' career success are individual-related factors, organizational-related factors, managerial competencies-related factors, and the person-environment fit factor. Career success should be operationalized using both objective and subjective career success. Research limitations/implications - The study was exploratory, based on a literature review. Empirical study is needed to examine the predictive potential of the four key factors (i.e. individual-related factors, organizational-related factors, managerial competencies-related factors, and person-environment fit factor) for public sector managers' career success. Practical implications - Strengthening the [human resource development] HRD framework through organizational development, personnel training and development and career development may develop and unleash individual potential which leads to positive career outcomes (objective and subjective career success). Originality/value - The research constructs a theoretical framework which outlines the predictive potential of four key factors on public sector managers' career success. The four key factors can be developed through HRD practices.

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Nearly half of all workers (40 per cent) experience at least one form of stress which could reduce productivity, for example a lack of concentration or loss of sleep. The author's new analysis shows that low financial capability and resilience is a significant cause of stress across the UK workforce. This is one area where every employer, regardless of size, has an existing relationship with their staff, and could potentially reduce stress and improve productivity. The UK's workforce lacks financial resilience. It's clearly affecting people's ability to concentrate at work and blunting productivity. In this report the author considers ways in which the nation can reduce stress and boost workplace engagement to help improve UK productivity. The author presents new analysis of Understanding Society, a longitudinal survey of 40,000 households across the UK. The authors examines how stress affects workers, reducing productivity, and how low financial resilience is a substantial contributing factor.

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The growing interest developed around the learning organization concept and its impact on work-related outcomes in the West has not been matched yet in other parts of the world. The purpose of this qualitative study was to identify the relationships among the learning organization culture, employee job satisfaction and organizational commitment in the Lebanese banking sector. Results showed positive and significant correlations among the different variables but no interaction effect of the Lebanese social patterns.

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In the wake of Australia's accelerated uptake of digital technology during the [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19 pandemic, the country is still riding a wave of innovation. As the nation continues to ramp up its digital transformation, there is still an urgent need to develop a deeper pool of technology professionals and workers with in-demand digital skills to help close the skills gap. In 2022, the Australian government and technology sector set the goal of creating 1.2 million tech-related jobs by 2030. To study the momentum for this transformation in Australia and elsewhere around the globe, Gallup collaborated with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to conduct one of the largest international surveys on digital skills to date. Between 2-23 August 2022, Gallup surveyed more than 30,000 workers with access to the internet across 19 countries - including Australia - and surveyed more than 9,000 employers. In Australia, Gallup surveyed 2,164 working adults and 775 employers.

Australia is a technologically advanced democracy with a highly educated population and leading-edge digital infrastructure and services. As such, the results show three-quarters (76 per cent) of workers use a computer or tablet at work. However, the bulk of these 'digital workers' use basic digital skills (36 per cent) or intermediate digital skills (31 per cent). The remaining 9 per cent use advanced digital skills. The results of the survey consistently show that advanced digital skills - and the adoption of cloud technology - provide economic value to businesses and workers in Australia, raising gross domestic product (GDP), revenue growth, innovation, wages, and job satisfaction for businesses that integrate these technologies, and the workers who acquire the needed skill sets. Australian employers in the public and private sectors, like their counterparts around the globe, are struggling to fill vacant jobs that require these skills. This report offers insight into the appetite workers and organisations have for digital skills training that could help fill these roles, and which digital skills interest them most.

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This study uses data from the Longitudinal and International Study of Adults (LISA) to provide information on individuals looking for work even if they are already employed. The study examines the reasons why workers want to look for a new job. The paper also explores the links between looking for a job while employed, the characteristics of workers seeking a new job and their level of job satisfaction.

Key findings are that: (1) in 2014, 12 per cent of paid workers reported that they had looked for a new job in the four weeks preceding the survey - this proportion has been on the rise since the mid-1990s, when it was around 5 per cent; (2) workers looking for a new job are younger and more educated, and have higher literacy and numeracy scores than workers who are not looking for a new job; in addition, almost one-third of them had a different job two years earlier, compared with 18 per cent of other workers; (3) workers who looked for another job estimated the probability of losing their current job in the next year at about 1 in 5 (19 per cent), compared with 10 per cent for other workers; in contrast, they were more optimistic than the rest of workers about their chances of finding a job that was at least as good as their current job; (4) on average, the desired wage among workers who are looking for a new job was 23 per cent higher than the wage earned in their current job; and (5) among workers dissatisfied with their current job, the probability of looking for a new job was more than 40 per cent for both men and women, even after taking other factors associated with the job search into account - the same probability was 6 per cent among those who were satisfied or very satisfied with their job.

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This book contains the results of the Learning and Skills Development Agency’s survey of staff opinions about their jobs in colleges. Although there is dissatisfaction, the results clearly show that staff genuinely want to be involved in planning improvements, setting targets and working to improve education in the learning and skills sector. It is now up to senior management teams to harness the undoubted and widespread commitment that exists.

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As careers in training and development (T&D) continue to evolve, almost no human resource development (HRD) research has investigated personality traits in today's T&D occupations, despite evidence linking personality with work success. Toward filling this lacuna, [the authors] identified four Big Five personality traits and four narrow traits with content matching T&D competencies. Based on person-career fit theory, [the authors] hypothesized that the trait profile would differentiate T&D from other occupations, and the traits would correlate with T&D career satisfaction. From 90,000 plus individuals receiving private career transition services, [the authors] compared trait scores of 284 individuals in T&D occupations and the others via bootstrapping (5,000 random samples, n [equals] 284, with the same age and gender distributions). The T&D personality profile was significantly elevated, with greatest differences on the narrow trait empathy, closely followed by assertiveness and customer service orientation plus optimism (small difference), and significant differences on Big Five traits extraversion, openness, and agreeableness (small difference), but no difference on emotional stability. T&D career satisfaction correlated significantly with five traits in the profile, most strongly with emotional stability and optimism. Also, emotional stability correlated more highly with career satisfaction for T&D than non-T&D occupations. The distinctive T&D personality profile raises questions for further HRD research and carries practical value for training and development of T&D personnel.

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Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate causes of high staff turnover among production workers at a large-scale retail case meat processor. Design/methodology/approach - Three hypotheses were developed to investigate six independent variables as possible factors of high job turnover. The research is based on a two-step process consisting of a literature review and field research. The literature review served to establish empirical links among the variables and construct an appropriate questionnaire for the field research. The field research consisted of 38 employees (out of 475) completing a 41-question survey. Individual interviews were also conducted with 20 of the 38 respondents. The paper is an empirically based case analysis. Findings - The results demonstrate that the employees' organizational commitment affects employee turnover. The findings also suggest that organizational commitment can be improved through increased effective communication between management and employees and ensuring that the organization's vision is shared and understood by employees. The link between job satisfaction and turnover was not supported by the research. Research limitations/implications - Sample size was affected due to the limited availability of employees during production hours. Increased sample size would allow further investigation within specific departments and shifts. Additional research could also have been done on how the company's HR [human resource] policy mandated from their US head office fits the needs of a Canadian based workforce. Originality/value - The paper provides insight on the causes of employee turnover and low organizational commitment. The paper recommends four actions to address communication and vision sharing to improve organizational commitment and ultimately turnover.

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