The quality of work life refers to the positive or negative character of a work environment. The basic purpose is to create an environment that is excellent for employees, as well as contributes to the financial health of the organization.
The elements of a typical program include many aspects such as: open communication, equitable reward systems, concern for workers' job security, and participation in job design. Work life programs emphasize skill development, reducing occupational stress, and establishing more cooperative relationships between management and employees.
The quality of work life constitutes an advance with respect to the traditional design of the work of scientific administration, which focused mainly on specialization and efficiency for the performance of small tasks.
As it evolved, it used the total division of labor, a rigid hierarchy, and the standardization of the workforce to achieve its goal of efficiency.
This was intended to reduce costs through employees who performed repetitive and unskilled jobs.
Many problems arose due to the little attention of classical design to the quality of working life. There was an excessive division of the task and an over-reliance on rules, procedures, and hierarchy.
Many workers were so unprepared that they had no job satisfaction.
The result was high staff turnover and absenteeism. Quality declined and workers lined up.
The conflict arose when workers tried to improve their conditions, and the management response to such situations was to increase controls, increase supervision and organize more rigidly.
There is a need to give the worker more opportunity for challenge, for a complete task, more opportunity to use advanced techniques, for growth, and more coercion to contribute their ideas.
In short, the phenomenon expressed as "Quality of working life" refers to the contradiction that exists at work, between fundamental priorities such as being "productive" and being "human".