Study title

The annual survey studied employee opinion on the quality of working life in Finnish municipalities. Main themes were psychosocial working environment, job characteristics, pay systems, job satisfaction, employment security, training and development, capacity to work, and bullying and discrimination at work. First, the respondents were asked how many years they had worked for the employer they were working for at the time, type of contract, number of persons at the workplace, what kind of changes there had been in staff numbers, working hours, and contracts over the past 12 months, and whether people had been transferred to other units. Further questions covered team work, and whether there had been conflicts at the workplace, between what groups and whether the conflicts had decreased or increased over the past 12 months. Incidents of bullying and violence were charted. Next set of questions covered the respondent's autonomy at work and other job characteristics, overtime and its compensation, flexible working time arrangements, and R's membership in a trade union or professional association. Changes over the past year in workload, physical or mental stress, in access to training etc were explored as well as pay and bonus systems, and satisfaction with pay. Psychosocial working environment was charted with a number of questions, for instance, whether employees were treated equally, how supervisors handled development ideas suggested by subordinates and so on. One topic pertained to whether the respondents had presented any ideas to improve working conditions, products, services or working methods at the workplace and whether there had been other development initiatives. The respondents' participation in job-related training and development was investigated. One theme pertained to job satisfaction. The respondents were asked to what extent they agreed with a number of statements relating to staff sufficiency, organisation of work, access to information, physical...