Quality of work life in the globally changing workplace - An exploration

Abstract

The concept of quality of work life (QWL) is gaining increasing attention by all organisation all over the world. Quality of life encompasses the sum total of healthy experiences that individuals experience in various facets of life. A sizable component of the quality of life is the quality of life experienced by organisation members at the workplace. The QWL therefore is important and worthy of deep study as individuals do not compartmentalise their lives but carry even their satisfaction of otherwise experienced at work where they spend the major part of their time. Thus, the QWL spills over to the quality of life experienced in the family. QWL will have direct and indirect relationship with the economic and social well-being of large portion of population which lies beyond the domain of industry. Improved QWL naturally helps to improve the family life of the employees and also improves the performance of the industry/enterprises. Ever since the concept of QWL was first used over 30 years ago, a range of definitions and theoretical constructs have succeeded each other with the aim of mitigating many problems facing the concept. A historical overview of the concept of QWL is presented here. Given the lack of consensus concerning the solutions that have been developed to date, a new definition of QWL is suggested, inspired by the research on a related concept. This article reviews the meaning of QWL, various definition of QWL and determinant of QWL based on the reviews.