Abstract: This study quantifies the effects of quality of work life on employees.

It aims to gain an insight into current working life policies and practices, as well as work-life balance issues of employees. Several notable factors that influence qualities of work life are Adequate and Fair Compensation; Safe and Healthy Working Conditions; Opportunity to Use and Develop Human Capabilities; Opportunity for Career Growth etc. QWL provides for the balanced relationship among work, non- work and family aspects of life. In other words, family life and social life should not be strained by working hours including overtime work, work during inconvenient hours, business travel, transfers, vacations, etc. This report is formulated after a thorough research and is based on the information given by the company personal and through questionnaire filled by the employees. In due course of our project we have visited the company and interacted with the people concerned. Here I also got the opportunity to learn about work life balance policies provided to employees by an organization. Quality of work life: This term refers to the favorableness or UN favorableness of a total job environment for people. QWL programs are another way in which organizations recognize their responsibility to develop jobs and working conditions that are excellent for people as well as for economic health of the organization. The elements in a typical QWL include: Open Communications Equitable Reward systems Concern for employee job security Satisfying career and participating in decision making

Many early QWL efforts focus on job enrichment. In addition to improve the work system, QWL programs emphasize development of employee skills, reduction of occupational stress, and development of more cooperative labor- management relations. Vigorous domestic and international competition drives organizations to be more productive. Proactive managers and HR departments respond to this challenge by finding new ways to improve productivity. Some strategies rely heavily upon new capital investment and technology. Others seek changes in employee relations practices. HR departments are involved with efforts to improve productivity through changes in employee relations. QWL means having good supervision, good working conditions, good pay, benefits, an interesting, challenging and rewarding job. High QWL is sought through an employee relations philosophy that encourages the use of QWL efforts, which are systematic attempts by an organization to give workers greater opportunities to affect their jobs and their contribution to the organizations overall effectiveness i.e., a proactive HR department finds ways to empower employees so that they draw on their brains & wits, usually by getting the employees more involved in the decision making process. A Rationale: Job specialization & simplification were popular in the early part of the century. Employees were assigned narrow jobs and supported by a rigid hierarchy in the expectation that efficiency would improve. The idea was to lower cost by using unskilled workers who could be easily trained to do a small, repetitive part of each job.

Many difficulties developed from that classical job design; however, there was excessive division of labor. Workers became socially isolated from their co- workers because their highly specialized jobs weakened their community of interest in the whole product. De- skilled workers lost pride in their work and became bored with their jobs. High order (social and growth) needs were left unsatisfied. The result was higher turnover and absenteeism, declines in quality and alienated workers. Conflict often arose as workers sought to improve their conditions and organizations failed to respond appropriately. The real cause was that in many instances the job itself was not satisfying. Forces for change: A factor contributing to the problem was that the workers themselves were changing. They became more educated, effluent (partly because of the effectiveness of classical job design), and more independent. They began reaching for higher order needs, something more than merely earning their bread. Employees now had two reasons for re-designing jobs and organizations for a better QWL: Classical redesign originally gave inadequate attention to human needs Needs and aspirations of workers themselves were changing Humanized work through QWL: One option was to redesign jobs to have the attributes desired by people, and redesign organizations to have the environment desired by the people. This approach seems to improve QWL. There is a need to give workers more of a challenge, more of a whole task, more opportunity to use their ideas. Close attention to QWL provides a more humanized work environment. It attempts to serve the higher order needs of workers as well as their basic needs. It seeks to employ the higher skills of workers and to provide an environment that encourages them to improve their skills. The idea is that human resources should be developed and not simply used. Further, the work should not have excessively negative conditions. It should not put workers under undue stress. It should not damage or degrade their humanness. It should not be threatening or unduly dangerous. Finally it should contribute to, or at least leave unimpaired, workers ability to perform in their life roles, such as citizen, spouse and parent. That is, work should contribute to general social advancement. Defining QWL: The best way of approaching quality of life measurement is to measure the extent to which peoples happiness requirements are met i.e., those requirements which are a necessary condition of anyones happiness- those without which no member of the human race can be happy -McCall, S: 1975, Quality of life, social indicators research 2, pp 229-248. QOL may be defined as subjective well being. Recognizing the subjectivity of QOL is a key to understanding this construct. QOL reflects the difference, the gap, between the hopes and expectations of a person and their present experience. Human adaption is such that life expectations are usually adjusted so as to lie within the realm of what the individual perceives to be possible. This enables people who have difficult life circumstances to maintain an reasonable QOL. -Janssen Quality of life studies.

Criteria of measuring QWL: Adequate and fair compensation: There are different opinions about the adequate compensation. The committee on fair wages defined fair wage as the wage which is above the minimum wage but below the living age Safe and healthy working conditions: Most of the organizations provide safe and healthy working conditions due to humanitarian requirements and/or legal requirements. In fact these conditions are a matter of enlightened self interest. Opportunity to use and develop human capabilities: Contrary to the traditional assumptions, QWL has improved to the extent that the worker can excise more control over his/her work, and the degree to which the job embraces an entire meaningful task but not a part of it. QWL provides for opportunities like autonomy in work and participation in planning in order to use human capabilities. Opportunity for career growth: Opportunities for promotions are limited in case of all categories of employees either due to educational barriers or due to limited opening at the higher level. QWL provides future opportunities for continued growth and security by expanding ones capabilities, knowledge and qualifications. Social integration in the work force: Social integration can be established by creating freedom from prejudice, supporting primary work as a sense of community and inter personal openness, legal and upward mobility. Constitutionalism in the work organization: QWL provides constitutional protection to the employees only to the level of desirability as it hampers workers. It happens because the managements action is challenged in every action and bureaucratic procedures need to be followed at that level. Constitutional protection is provided to employees on such matters such as privacy, free speech, equity and due process. Work and quality of life: QWL provides for the balanced relationships among work, non work and family aspects of life. In other words family and social life should not be strained by working hours including overtime, work during inconvenient hours, business travel, transfers and vacations etc., Social relevance of work: QWL is concerned about the establishment of social relevance to work in a socially beneficial manner. The workers self esteem would be high if his work is useful to the society and the vice versa is also true. Specific issues in QWL: Mundick and Schuster suggested 11 major issues: Pay and stability of employment: Good pay still dominates most of the other factors in employee satisfaction. Various alternative means for providing wages should be developed in view of increase in cost of living index, increase in levels and rates of income tax and profession tax. Stability to a greater extent can be provided by enhancing the facilities for human resource development. Occupational stress: It is a condition of strain on ones emotions, thought process and physical condition. Stress is determined by the nature of work, working conditions, working hours, pause in the work schedule, workers abilities and nature of work, its match with the job requirements. Stress is caused due to irritability, hyper excitation or depression, unstable behavior, fatigue, stuttering, trembling psychometric pains, smoking and drug abuse. Stress adversely affects employee productivity. The HR manager in order to reduce the stress has to identity, prevent and tackle the problem. Organizational health programs: They aim at educating employees abdut health problems, means of maintaining and improving of health etc., these programs cover drinking and smoking cessation,

hypertension control, other forms of cardiovascular risk reduction, family planning etc., effective implementation of these programs result in reduction of absenteeism, hospitalization, disability, excessive job turnover and premature death. This program should also cover relaxation, physical exercise, diet control etc., Alternative work schedules: This includes work at home, flexible working hours, staggered hours, and reduced work week, part time employment which may be introduced for the convenience and comfort of the workers as the work schedules offer individual the leisure time, flexible hours of work is preferred. Participative management and control of work: Trade unions and workers believe that workers participation in management improves work life. Workers also feel that they can have control over their work, use their skills, and make a real contribution to the job. Recognition: Recognizing the worker as a human being rather than as a laborer increases the QWL participative management, awarding the rewarding systems, congratulating the employees for their achievement, job enrichment, offering prestigious designations to the jobs, providing well furnished and decent work places, offering membership in clubs or associations, providing vehicles, offering vacation trips are some means to recognize the employees. Congenial worker- supervisor relations: Harmonious relations gives the worker a sense of belongingness, social association, achievement of work results, this in turn leads to better QWL. Grievance Procedure: Workers have a sense of fair treatment when the company them the opportunity to ventilate their grievances and present their case succinctly rather than settling through arbitrarily. Adequacy of resources: Resources should match with stated objectives otherwise employees will not be able to attain their objectives. This results in employee dissatisfaction and lowers QWL. Seniority and Merit in promotions: Seniority is taken as then base for promotion in case of operating employees. Merit is considered as the base for advancement for managerial people whereas seniority is preferred for promotion of ministerial employees. The promotional policies and activities should be fair and just in order to ensure high QWL. Employment on permanent basis: Employment of workers on casual and temporary probationary basis gives them a sense of insecurity. On the other hand employment on permanent basis gives them security and leads them to higher order QWL.

Strategies for improvement of QWL Self managed team works: These are also called autonomous groups or integrated work teams. These work teams are formed with 10- 20 employees who plan, coordinate and control the activities of the team with the help of a team leader who is one among them. Each team performs all activities including selecting their people. Each team has authority to make decisions and regulate the activities. The group as a whole is accountable for the success or failure. Salaries are fixed on the basis of individual and group achievement. Job redesign and enrichment: Narrow jobs can be combined into larger units of accomplishment. Jobs are redesigned with a view to enriching them to satisfy higher order human needs. Effective leadership and supervisory behavior: For this 9-9 managerial grid is suitable Career development: Provision for career planning, communicating, and counseling the employees for career opportunities, career path, education and development. Job security

 Administrative or organizational justice: The principle of justice, fair and equity should be taken care of in disciplinary procedure. QWL as HR strategy Todays workforce consists of literate workers who expect more than just money from their work. In the modern scenario, QWL as a strategy of HR management is being recognized as the key development among all work systems, not merely as a concession. This is integral to any organization towards its wholesome growth. This is attempted on par with strategies of CRM. Strategy and Tactics Over the years since industrial revolution much experimentation has gone into exploiting potential of human capital in work areas either explicitly or implicitly. Thanks to the revolution in advanced technology, the imperative need to look into QWL in a new perspective is felt and deliberated upon. Major companies are tirelessly implementing this paradigm in HR department. Globalization has lowered national boundaries, creating a knowledge based economy that spins and spans the world. Major economies are converging technologically and economically, and are highly connected to present moment. The new global workplace demands certain prerequisites such as higher order of thinking skills like abstraction system thinking and experimental enquiry, problem solving and team work. The needs are greater in the new systems, which are participative ventures involving workers managed by so called fictional proprietors.