Quality of work life in the Industrial Estates of Kerala

Abstract

Quality of Work Life studies are increasingly gaining the attention of entrepreneurs due to their usefulness in increasing productivity as well as job satisfaction of workers. With this in mind an attempt was made in this study to assess quality of work life of employees in the industrial estates of Kerala by interviewing 322 respondents selected by following multi-stage random sampling. Richard Walton s eight point factors have been used for measuring QWL. It was found that the socio-economic background of the employees in the industrial estate is not satisfactory for economic development. Employees are not satisfied with their compensation, opportunity to use and develop their capacities, opportunities for continued growth and security, constitutionalism in the work organisation, and their work and total life space. Regarding the other factors of QWL they have average level of satisfaction. On the basis of attitude of employees in the conventional major industrial estates, there are two categories of QWL. The first category of QWL is moulded by all factors, while the second category is mainly based on safe and healthy working condition. Since safe and healthy working condition has important roles in both categories of QWL, it can be stated that this factor is the most deciding factor of QWL in industrial estates of Kerala. The first category of the quality of work life, which is more important, is depending on sex, age, education, terms of employment, nature of job, experience, income, nature of organisation, products manufactured by the units, and nature of sales of the unit. The second category of the quality of work life is depending on age of the employees, terms of employment, nature of job, income of the employees and nature of ownership of the organisation.