Paul Jewo

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The Difference Between Good and Bad Jobs in Australia.
As we develop through the 21st century, employers are only beginning to realise just how important job quality is for the success of an organisation. Job
Quality is broadly defined as the employee’s experience of work & non-work processes, pay and implicit abilities that determine the employee’s orientation towards achieving the business objectives. A significant issue within Australia is the desire for full-time work not being met by certain age groups due to factors of the economy such as the recession. Furthermore, a two-way interference between work and life is another cause to factor in for poor job quality within Australia. Moreover, certain industries in Australia are infamous for the issue of having poor pay—high workload.
This paper aims to critically define what job quality is and targets the central causation of poor job quality by looking at recent trends within Australian organisations. The paper then explores several human resource practices to tackle the identified issues within Australia.
The aspects of Job quality are multidimensional and thus there are multiple definitions to job quality. It centrally follows the idea that factors affecting employee morale and work performance have substantial effects on the organisation’s ability to meet objectives. Assessing the quality of work is a subjective process that is undertaken by managers and thus there are no set certified standards for assessing job quality. Different circumstances, experiences and expectations of employees across all jobs in Australia make it somewhat difficult for a reliable comparative analysis to identify what differentiates good and bad jobs. There are numerous factors in which contribute to bad jobs, some of which are work-family conflict, workload & wages, job-insecurity and implicit deficiencies. Poor job quality generally results in
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dissatisfaction expressed by employees and low productivity is the result such as low to no participation, communication and the amount of day to day output of work.
Good job quality is ideal for the employer, the employee and the firm. An exemplar of a good job is a comfortable work environment, sufficient job prospects, meaningfulness of the job to the employee and the employee to the firm and recognition for the efforts of the employee (Bill, 2007, p.185). A good job will see that the employee is free from of emotional strain and interpersonal conflict but rather, high levels of participation with workplace activities and also a comfortable balance between work and life.
Some recent trends in Australia describe the effect of how the state of the economy has had on employment. The economic climb from in the 1990’s after recession showed a rapid decrease in standard employment arrangements and a sudden increase in non-standard jobs which saw a loss in full-time day jobs. The priority population groups hit hardest by this change were middle aged males and middle aged females without children (Burgess et al., 2000, p.254). Overall, this diminished the total confidence of the worker as he or she shifted from standard to non-standard employment (i.e part-time, casual employment). Job security had dropped dramatically to the the uncertain prospects of work and pay was considerably lower to compensate for the economic downturn. Australia’s unemployment; plus the rise of non-standard jobs showed an overall reduction of job quality for Australians, especially for the priority population groups.
It is difficult for managers to determine how employment conditions will be as they are always rapidly changing. One common change is the rise in part-time job demand due to mothers and university students looking to cover day to day expenses
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(Rogers & Joan, 2004, p.238). Contrary to popular belief, employers have little to no control or accurate estimation of employment trends due the rapidly changing economic conditions, consumer needs and employment needs and thus, employers need to strategically work around these obstacles to offer the best job quality to the employees. It is understood that part-time work is undertaken to cover expenses or daily life. To achieve the highest level of job quality, managers must accommodate to employees with work hours that is most preferred by the employee to accommodate for work-life balance. Interest in the management of work hours is growing in
Australia as more people such as mothers, the elderly and students are more prevalent in the part-time or casual job sectors (ibid. p.239). Part-time work generally has inferior features compared to a full-time job due to the absence of job security, promotion prospects and fringe benefits (Wooden, Warren & Drago, 2009, p.149).
Part-time work also lacks the support of some legislation and unionisation normally expected in full-time work (Bill, 2007, p.186).
Managers often tackle the issue of work-life balance by simply adjusting the work environment to employee needs. This means that work-life balance policies are implemented and perhaps surveys about work-life balance allow for a better understanding of each and every employee’s situation. In some cases a work-life balance officer is required where this individual’s sole purpose is to ensure that employees’ needs are being met both in and out of work hours. The key objective here is that flexible work hours are provided to satisfy worker needs. One needs to take into account that stress at home may be a causality of underperformance at work.

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Sufficient wages, salary and all other income sources are essential to produce good job quality. OECD data (2014) shows that on average, Australia has one the highest household disposable incomes per person across all nations. One can argue that high wages only compensates for the high living costs of Australia, however there is no doubt that Australian’s have very comfortable lifestyles. In theory, income is congruent with workload meaning more amounts of work deserves more pay. This is not always the case as Eardley (2000, p.313) identifies there can be up to a 40% difference in range between the highest paid and the lowest paid people working in the same position across Australian workplaces. This however doesn’t take into accountability that some employees can get the job done better than others. It is the manager’s role to identify and distinguish between the good from the bad so corrective measures can be taken such as promotions, increase in wages and fringe benefits. Of course, sufficient analysis such as job analyses are essential to accurately identifying and rewarding the thriving worker. the These extrinsic reinforcers directly affect an employee’s morale and furthermore their meaningfulness to the job and the organisation’s meaningfulness to them.
The old-age belief once was that work should be strictly professional where satisfaction only should come when one gets paid. Now, more than ever, there is a growing interest of the employee’s opinion about general processes of the organisation as organisations evolve into a more people-focused Democratic approach from the once popular now aged production-focused approach. Bartram et al. (2004) closely examined the nursing industry workforce and concluded that the highest levels of stress were from budget cuts leading to increase in work overload due to staffing shortages which led to higher turnover. With the budget cuts that had taken place and
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the ongoing issue of turnover, nursing still did not reach the top 10 occupations with most prevalent suicide rates in Australia in 2014 (Adonis, 2014). This points out the major existing issue of employee stress across many industries in Australia. The best practice is to allow employee freedom of what he or she believes is the correct way to take on any assigned tasks. It is essential that the meaningfulness of the task is understood by the employee through communication. This allows for prospects of future opinion-making which benefits the morale of the employee and possibly advances the future of the organisation itself. A personal attachment to the organisational objectives makes the difference between an employee who feels obliged to complete a task and an employee who desires to complete the task.
To summarise, job quality is an essential factor that must be taken into consideration if the a manager seeks to have his or her organisational needs met.
There are many ways to define job quality however there are significant indicators of good jobs and bad jobs. Recent trends in Australia show that poor job quality leads to job dissatisfaction, low productivity, poor mental state and inevitably turnover. The cause of these issues can be related to incidents at home or work whether it would be family conflict, workplace conflict, task-fatigue or dissatisfaction with pay. It is the
Human Resource department’s duty to address, monitor, evaluate and implement strategies to improve job quality. Some possible practices can be job variation, feedback, encouragement of participation, raise and compensation payments. The notion is that the objectives in a democratic style organisation can only be met when full contribution by each employee is made.

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References
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Australian nurses: Implications for recruitment and retention.

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Bill, M. (2007). Good Jobs, Bad Jobs?: Understanding the Quality of Aged Care Jobs, and Why It Matters. Australian Journal Of Social Issues, 42(2), 183-196.
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Rodgers, J. (2004). Hourly Wages of Full-time and Part-time Employees in Australia.
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