Elsevier

Social Science & Medicine

Volume 158, June 2016, Pages 132-140
Social Science & Medicine

How does employment quality relate to health and job satisfaction in Europe? A typological approach

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.04.017Get rights and content

Highlights

  • A typology of contemporary employment arrangements is constructed for the EU27.

  • Relations between the typology and workers' health and well-being are studied.

  • The job types show clear relations with job satisfaction, general and mental health.

  • Job types with adverse working times are particularly detrimental to women's health.

Abstract

The changing nature of employment in recent decades, due to an increased emphasis on flexibility and competitiveness in European labour markets, compels the need to assess the consequences of contemporary employment situations for workers. This article aims to study the relation between the quality of employment and the health and well-being of European workers, using data from the 2010 European Working Conditions Survey. A typology of employment arrangements, mapping out employment quality in the European labour force, is constructed by means of a Latent Class Cluster Analysis. This innovative approach shows that it is possible to condense multiple factors characterising the employment situation into five job types: Standard Employment Relationship-like (SER-like), instrumental, precarious unsustainable, precarious intensive and portfolio jobs. Binary logistic regression analyses show that, controlling for other work quality characteristics, this employment quality typology is related to self-perceived job satisfaction, general health and mental health. Precarious intensive jobs are associated with the worst and SER-like jobs with the best health and well-being situation. The findings presented in this study indicate that, among European wage workers, flexible and de-standardised employment tends to be related to lower job satisfaction, general health and mental health. The quality of employment is thus identified as an important social determinant of health (inequalities) in Europe.

Introduction

From the end of the 1970s onwards, several structural changes have occurred in employment in Western capitalist societies (Bosch, 2004, Kalleberg, 2009). The combination of subsequent economic recessions, globalisation processes, technological innovations and demographic changes compelled the labour markets of these countries to adapt to the altered situation (Scott-Marshall, 2007, Benach et al., 2014). An increased emphasis on labour market competitiveness and flexibility followed, since the existing (rather extensive) systems of employment protection and regulation were seen as impeding the necessary changes (Bosch, 2004). The resulting modifications in employment policies and practices have had far-reaching consequences for the jobs of many employees (Scott-Marshall, 2010, Rubery and Grimshaw, 2003). In contemporary European labour markets, decreasing numbers of workers are employed according to the principles of the post-Second World War ‘Standard Employment Relationship’ (SER), involving full-time, permanent employment, a family wage, social benefits, strong regulatory protection, regular working hours and possibilities for career progression (Mückenberger, 1989, Bosch, 2004). These employment features refer to the quality of employment conditions and relations, “employment quality” for short.

Employment quality is one of two components that are usually distinguished in the broader “job quality” concept. The first component consists of job features that are intrinsically related to the tasks that need to be performed. Health associations of these “intrinsic job features” (i.e. job control, resources and demands) are well documented (Holman and McClelland, 2011). Employment conditions and relations constitute the second component of job quality. These job characteristics (e.g. contract, working hours, representation, …) can be perceived as the framework surrounding the intrinsic work tasks. Health correlates of these “employment quality features” are relatively underinvestigated (Vives et al., 2010). Research that conceives employment quality or employment precariousness as broader than only contractual instability or perceptions of job insecurity is particularly scarce (De Cuyper et al., 2008, Vives et al., 2010), although employment quality is in fact a multidimensional concept involving various aspects of the work experience (Scott-Marshall, 2010).

In this study, we apply an innovative and recently validated concept of employment quality that uses the main features of the SER as an ideal-typical point of reference. Seven dimensions are specified: employment stability, material rewards, workers' rights and social protection, working times, employability opportunities, collective organisation and interpersonal power relations (Van Aerden et al., 2014, Van Aerden et al., 2015). This concept builds on previous work regarding the measurement of “employment precariousness” (Vives et al., 2010), but at the same time transcends the employment precariousness concept. However, the two concepts remain closely related. The underlying assumption of both concepts is that the accumulation of several adverse employment quality characteristics results in precarious employment, which is a general state of disempowerment in the employment situation (Benach et al., 2014). Although it is clear that the accumulation of adverse employment quality features tends to occur more often in employees holding non-standard contracts, also permanent employees are increasingly affected (Benach et al., 2014, Scott-Marshall, 2010). Given the large variations in national contexts, economic sectors, companies and professions, the search for flexibility and competitiveness has most likely affected various employment arrangements, ranging from high-quality to precarious employment (Van Aerden et al., 2014).

This article aims to examine the relationship between employment quality and European workers' health and well-being, using an innovative, typological approach to operationalise employment quality. This is important given previous findings indicating a relationship between aspects of employment quality and self-perceived job satisfaction, general health and mental health (Scott-Marshall, 2010, Vives et al., 2010). Moreover, differences between men and women in these health associations may be expected. Dominant gender roles make the balance between work and family demands particularly challenging for women, since they tend to perform most of the care and unpaid domestic work (De Moortel et al., 2014, Davis and Greenstein, 2009).

Empirical evidence on health and well-being associations only exists for a limited set of employment quality aspects. A short overview of these results is provided per outcome. Apart from self-perceived general and mental health, job satisfaction was included, because it can be conceived as an important intermediate determinant of mental well-being that is specifically related to the current employment situation (Faragher et al., 2005, Handel, 2005).

Research so far fails to show a consistent relationship between contract type and job satisfaction (De Cuyper and De Witte, 2006, Wilkin, 2013). The heterogeneity within the temporary workforce offers a possible explanation for the small associations and null effects that are regularly found when comparing job satisfaction levels of temporary and permanent workers (Wilkin, 2013, Wagenaar et al., 2012). Psychological contract theory complements this assumption by stating that the potentially harmful effects of job instability may depend on workers' expectations regarding the stability of their employment (De Cuyper and De Witte, 2006). Also for income, results considering its relationship with job satisfaction remain inconclusive. Generally speaking, a weak but positive association between income and job satisfaction is found (Judge et al., 2010). Regarding working times, research indicates that it is mainly the involuntary nature of working time arrangements that is related to lower job satisfaction (Beckers et al., 2008). Union members are generally less satisfied with their jobs than non-union workers, but this finding can be largely explained by the lower intrinsic work quality of jobs with high unionisation rates, typically industrial sector jobs (Hammer and Avgar, 2005, Abraham et al., 2008). A very clear, negative impact of abusive treatment in the workplace (i.e. experiencing racial/sexual harassment or bullying) on job satisfaction emerges from recent literature (Hutagalung and Ishak, 2012, Nielsen and Einarsen, 2012, Willness et al., 2007). Finally, research shows that participation in (employer-sponsored) training is positively related to job satisfaction (Georgellis and Lange, 2007, Jones et al., 2009).

Also for subjective health, a lack of consistent differences between permanent and temporary workers is shown in the literature, ranging from null effects (Bardasi and Francesconi, 2004, Scott-Marshall and Tompa, 2011) to small positive effects (Wagenaar et al., 2012). Low individual income, however, emerges from the literature as an important determinant of poor self-perceived health (Scott-Marshall and Tompa, 2011, Hemström, 2005). Recent research on the relationship between working times and general health indicates that both (unpaid) overtime hours and long working hours are detrimental for workers' health (Scott-Marshall and Tompa, 2011, Taris et al., 2011, Nakata, 2012). By contrast, Scott-Marshall and Tompa (2011) do not find significant effects of irregular work schedules and involuntary part-time employment on self-perceived health. Results considering the relation between union membership and subjective health are mixed (Reynolds and Brady, 2012, Scott-Marshall and Tompa, 2011), in contrast with the consistently positive relationships between abusive treatment in the workplace (sexual harassment, violence and bullying) and poor general health (Vaez et al., 2004).

Contract type tends to show only a small or no association with mental health (Bardasi and Francesconi, 2004, LaMontagne et al., 2014), although in one study a stronger effect was found (Kim et al., 2006). Regarding income, Virtanen et al. (2008) show that a low household income is associated with a higher risk for depressive and anxiety disorders. However, no studies on the specific relationship with individual income were found. The relationship between working times and mental health has attracted a great deal of attention in recent literature. Results suggest that (involuntary) overtime hours are associated with an increased risk to suffer poor mental health (Grosch et al., 2006). Also long working hours are related to poor mental health (Amagasa and Nakayama, 2013, Cottini and Lucifora, 2013), although this effect is mitigated in workers having control over their working times (Zolnierczyk-Zreda et al., 2012). Finally, a clear relation exists between abusive treatment in the workplace (conceived as workplace bullying and sexual harassment) and mental health (Nielsen and Einarsen, 2012, Willness et al., 2007, Hansen et al., 2011, Krieger et al., 2011).

This overview of research findings shows that several aspects of employment quality are important for workers' job satisfaction, general health and mental health. While some studies focus on one specific feature, others present models that take into account multiple employment characteristics. However, none of these studies fully acknowledges the reality that employment characteristics tend to occur in certain configurations and cluster in specific groups of employees (Van Aerden et al., 2014). In order to better grasp the impact of employment quality on a person's health and well-being, it is necessary to shift the focus of research towards a more holistic conception of jobs as packages of employment characteristics. Therefore, in this article an innovative and insightful typological approach is applied to shed light on employment quality and its relation with employees' health and job satisfaction. This approach allows us to simultaneously assess different element of individuals' employment experience, by turning the distribution of several employment conditions and relations indicators over the sample into a meaningful set of ideal-typical employment arrangements. These job types will then be related to respondents' job satisfaction and general/mental health, allowing us to gain insight into the health associations of the contemporary employment structure. Before presenting the results, we provide an overview of the data, measures and statistical procedures that are used.

Section snippets

Data

Data from the 5th wave of the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS2010) are used. This cross-sectional survey is organised every 5 years since 1990 by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound). For the 2010 wave, 43,816 questionnaire-based face-to-face interviews were carried out with working residents of the 34 participating countries, aged 15 years or older at the time of the survey. A multi-stage, stratified, random sampling technique was

Results

In this first paragraph, we present the crude (uncontrolled) estimated prevalence of job dissatisfaction, poor general health and poor mental health for each employment arrangement in our typology (results not shown). This allows the reader to better judge the size of the relations between job types and outcome variables. The crude estimated prevalence of job dissatisfaction is 33.63% for precarious intensive jobs, 23.11% for instrumental jobs and 16.47% for precarious unsustainable jobs, while

Conclusions

Our findings contribute to current knowledge on the relationship between contemporary employment in Europe and workers' health and well-being. The main strength of our study is the use of a holistic, person-centred instead of a variable-centred approach, constructing job types through the simultaneous consideration of multiple employment quality indicators. Five job types were identified, each marked by a specific configuration of employment conditions and relations: SER-like, instrumental,

Acknowledgement

The research for this article has been supported by the SOPHIE-project, which has received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Program Health (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no. 278173. The authors would like to thank Joan Benach and Alejandra Vives for sharing their insight and expertise.

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