European measurement of working conditions and related policies: inventory and assessment of available data tools
Creators: name: Smits, I.
name: Van Gyes, G.
name: Szekér, L.
name: Vercruyssen, A.
name: Greenan, N.
name: Seghir, M.
name: Hamon-Cholet, S.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2017

description: <strong>Overview of the chapters</strong> This project has to be situated within the context of the inclusive growth priority of the Europe 2020 strategy, the growth strategy of the European Union. Here, the EU has set five ambitious thematic objectives to be reached by 2020; on employment, innovation, education, social inclusion and climate/energy. In addition to that, the ‘EU Employment Package contributing to more and better jobs’ was developed in order to complement the EU2020 strategy and the agenda for new skills and new jobs. With this Employment Package, the European Commission wants to boost job creation and focus on job-rich growth (COM 2020 final; European Commission, 2013) as well as to ensure the quality of new jobs. To evaluate this strategy and the progress, good measurement tools and indicators are necessary. The general objective of the InGRID project is in relation to this policy strategy to integrate and innovate existing but distributed European social sciences research infrastructures on ‘poverty and living conditions’ and on ‘working conditions and vulnerability’. InGRID as research infrastructure project wants to serve the social sciences community that aspires to make an evidence-based contribution to the European policy challenge of inclusive growth. It is a social sciences community that focuses on social in/exclusion, vulnerability-at-work and related social and labour market policies from a European comparative perspective. It is an interdisciplinary field of poverty research, labour studies, policy analysis and social statistics. Key tools in this social science research are all types of data: statistics on earnings, administrative social data, labour market data, surveys on quality of life or working conditions, and policy indicators. In this deliverable of the project we present the data inventory and assessment work that we conducted in the field of comparative research on working conditions and vulnerability. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) defines working conditions as follows: “<em>Working conditions are at the core of paid work and employment relationships. Generally speaking, working conditions cover a broad range of topics and issues, from working time (hours of work, rest periods, and work schedules) to remuneration, as well as the physical conditions and mental demands that exist in the workplace</em>”. Eurofound gives the following definition of working conditions: “<em>Conditions in and under which work is performed as regards the work environment and the time, place and organization of work. […] Nowadays, […] a broader definition of the term is coming to be accepted which also includes the economic dimension and its effects on living conditions and the social roles of employees</em>.” Van Houten, Cabrita and Vargas (Eurofound, 2014) look at working conditions as “the result of interaction between characteristics of a job, the work, the company and the individual”. From a European perspective, this policy arena is defined with goals like ‘sustainable work’. Eurofound defines sustainable work as ‘living and working conditions are such that they support people in engaging and remaining in work’. Having a job and staying in a job is the key issue. The European Commission considers in this regard as inclusive when everyone of working age can participate in paid work, especially vulnerable and disadvantaged people. Two policy domains can be differentiated in this regard focusing on more jobs and good jobs: the first domain relates to various aspects of job quality. Green defines job quality as “the extent to which a job has work and employment-related factors that foster beneficial outcomes for the employee, particularly psychological well-being, physical well-being and positive attitudes such as job satisfaction.” (Green, 2006, in Holman 2012). It is a about modelling, designing and regulating job characteristics and the work environment; the second domains has to do with labour market policies and regulations. It is about making the individual stronger to have and stay in the job and providing the right circumstances for this. This domain includes issues of skills, careers, employability and health. Both the job (quality) characteristics and the labour market circumstances of the individual are or can be influenced by a set of policies and regulations at different levels. Relevant company (human resources) and public policies will have positive or negative short-term and long-term effects. Key research infrastructure in this field of working life studies with a cross-national and policy-oriented focus are surveys. As already stated, social scientists employ and use a range of data and methods. However, in an analytical approach of cross-national and cross-sectoral investigating a series of job dimensions and connecting these to the policies and behaviours of a series of actors, survey material is very important. Survey research is a commonly used method of collecting information about a population of interest. There are many different types of surveys, several ways to administer them, and many methods of sampling. Surveys are however the most valuable sources of information to assess working conditions. Surveys on working conditions aim at studying status and trends in working conditions and at identifying risk groups. These surveys allow us to obtain indicators to guide and define not only public policies but also actions carried out by the agents involved in this issue (Garcıa and Gil 1996). They provide data to analyse the situation, distribution and evolution of working and employment conditions and their health and productivity-related impacts. Surveillance of the work environment needs to include assessments being both cross-sectional – in order to point out vulnerable groups – and longitudinal – in order to allow the follow-up of trends.