A Research Paper

on

QUALITY OF WORK LIFE

PIONEER INSTITUTE OF PROFESSIONAL STUDIES

INDORE

PROJECT GUIDE NAME OF STUDENT

CA Prashant Jain Kush Sharma MBA sem III

INDEX

S.No. CONTENT Page Number

1. Introduction 2

2. Rationale 5

3. Objectives 6

4. Literature Review 6

5. Research Methodology 9

6. Discussion on findings 14

7. Conclusion & Recommendation for future research

15

8. References 16

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ABSTRACTThis 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 quality 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.

Kush Sharma

-CA Prashant Jain

1).INTRODUCTION

1.1)Conceptual framework:

In the family life and social life should not be

strained by working 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-

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life balance issues of employees. Several notable factors that influence quality 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 lifehours 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 hospital 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.

1.2) DEFINATION

The best way of approaching quality of life measurement is to measure the extent to which people's 'happiness requirements' are met - ie those requirements which are a necessary (although not sufficient) condition of anyone's 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-

Quality of Life is tied to perception of 'meaning'. The quest for meaning is central to the human condition, and we are brought in touch with a sense of meaning when we reflect on that which we have created, loved, believed in or left as a legacy.

- Frankl VE. 'Man's search for meaning.' New York: Pocket Books, 1963.

QWL can be define as "The quality of

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relationship between employees and the total working environment.”

1.3) DEFINING

VARIABLES

1. Attitude

2. Environment

3. Opportunities

4. Nature of Job

5. People

6. Stress Level

7. Career Prospects

8. Challenges

9. Growth and

Development

10. Risk Involved and

Reward

1.3.1)Attitude:

The perrson who is entrusted with a particular job needs to have sufficient knowledge, required skill and expertise, enough experience, enthusiasm, energy level, willingness to learn new things,

dynamism, sense of belongingness in the organization, involvement in the job, inter personnel relations, adaptability to changes in the situation, openness for innovative ideas, competitiveness, zeal, ability to work under pressure, leadership.

1.3.2)Environment:

The job may involve dealing with customers who have varied tolerance level, preferences, behavioral pattern, level of understanding; or it may involve working with dangerous machines like drilling pipes, cranes, lathe machines, welding and soldering machines, or even with animals where maximum safety precautions have to be observed which needs lot of concentration, alertness, presence of mind, quick with involuntary actions, synchronization of eyes, hands and body, sometimes high level of patience, tactfulness, empathy and compassion and control over emotions.

1.3.3)Opportunities:

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Some jobs offer opportunities for learning, research, discovery, self-development, enhancement of skills, room for innovation, public recognition, exploration, celebrity-status and loads and loads of fame. Others are monotonous, repetitive, dull, routine, no room for improvement and in every sense boring. Naturally the former ones are interesting and very much rewarding also.

1.3.4)Nature of Job:

For example, a driller in the oil drilling unit, a diver, a fire-fighter, traffic policeman, train engine driver, construction laborers, welder, miner, lathe mechanic have to do dangerous jobs and have to be more alert in order to avoid any loss of limb, or loss of life which is irreparable; whereas a pilot, doctor, judge, journalist have to be more prudent and tactful in handling the situation; a CEO, a professor, a teacher have more responsibility and accountability but safe working environment; a cashier or a security guard cannot afford to be careless

in his job as it involves loss of money, property and wealth; a politician or a public figure cannot afford to be careless, for his reputation and goodwill is at stake. Some jobs need soft skills, leadership qualities, intelligence, decision making abilities, abilities to train and extract work from others; other jobs need forethought, vision and yet other jobs need motor skills, perfection and extreme carefulness.

1.3.5)People:

Almost everyone has to deal with three set of people in the work place. Those are namely boss, co-workers in the same level and subordinates. Apart from this, some professions need interaction with people like patients, media persons, public, customers, thieves, robbers, physically disabled people, mentally challenged, children, foreign delegates, gangsters, politicians, public figures and celebrities. These situations demand high level of prudence, cool temper, tactfulness, humor,

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kindness, diplomacy and sensitiveness.

1.3.6)Stress Level:

All these above mentioned factors are inter-related and inter-dependant. Stress level need not be directly proportional to the compensation. Stress is of different types - mental stress/physical stress and psychological or emotional stress. A Managing Director of a company will have mental stress, a laborer will have physical stress, a psychiatrist will have emotional stress. Mental stress and Emotional stress cause more damage than physical stress.

1.3.7)Career Prospects:

Every job should offer career development. That is an important factor which decides the quality of work life. Status improvement, more recognition from the Management, appreciations are the motivating factors for anyone to take keen interest in his job. The work atmosphere should be conducive to achieve

organizational goal as well as individual development. It is a win-win situation for both the parties; an employee should be rewarded appropriately for his good work, extra efforts, sincerity and at the same time a lethargic and careless employee should be penalized suitably; this will motivate the former to work with more zeal and deter the latter from being so, and strive for better performance.

1.3.8)Challenges:

The job should offer some challenges at least to make it interesting; That enables an employee to upgrade his knowledge and skill and capabilities; whereas the monotony of the job makes a person dull, non-enthusiastic, dissatisfied, frustrating, complacent, initiative - less and uninteresting. Challenge is the fire that keeps the innovation and thrill alive. A well-accomplished challenging job yields greater satisfaction than a monetary perk; it boosts the self-confidence also.

1.3.9)Growth and Development:

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If an organization does not give chance for growth and personal development it is very difficult to retain the talented personnel and also to find new talent with experience and skill.

1.3.10)Risk Involved and Reward:

Generally reward or compensation is directly proportional to the quantum of work, man-hours, nature and extent of responsibility, accountability, delegated powers, authority of position in the organizational chart, risk involved, level of expected commitment, deadlines and targets, industry, country, demand and supply of skilled manpower and even political stability and economic policies of a nation. Although risk is involved in every job its nature and degree varies in them; All said and done, reward is a key criteria to lure a prospective worker to accept the offer.

2.)RATIONALE OF PAPER

Job specialization and simplification were popular in the early part of this 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. Higher-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

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real cause was that in many instances the job itself simply was not satisfying.A factor contributing to the problem was that the workers themselves were changing. They became educated, more affluent (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. Employers now had two reasons for re-designing jobs and organizations for a better QWL: Classical design

originally gave

inadequate attention to

human needs.

The needs and

aspirations of workers

themselves were

changing

3.)OBJECTIVES

To find out the impact of quality of work life on employee job satisfaction level. The survey was conducted to study whether employees’ perceptions towards QWL has any impacts on their job satisfaction. Past research indicated that employees have different perceptions towards their work life quality and this may have an impact on their job satisfaction. Stress in day to day work life is also assessed by looking at employees’ personal life aspects as well as occupational related stressors. Specifically, the objectives of the study were , to see whether the current organizational climate influences employees’ perception of job satisfaction.

4.)LITERATURE REVIEW

4.1)Facets of QWL:

Organizational Climate

In this study, QWL is measured using organizational climate

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facets that have been used in previous researches. It consists of 3 facets namely affective, cognitive and instrumental. Affective facet is measured using two dimensions namely quality of relationships and pessimism about organizational change. Quality of relationships is a critical component of the social relations aspect of climate and has been used in pastclimate studies. Pessimism about organizational change, as developed by Wanous, Reichers & Austin (2000) is another important indicator with regards to the affective climate as cynicism is usually backed by perceptions of ineffective leadership practices.

Pessimism about change may be negatively related to job satisfaction because hope in future improvement would be low. The cognitive climate facet consists of a sense of deriving intrinsic rewards from one’s work. The cognitive facet of is measured in this study through several dimensions of cognitive climate: meaningfulness,

competence, self-determination, impact and work family interference. Meaningfulness has been described as the “engine” of empowerment (Spreitzer, Kizilos & Nason, 1997) which gives the feeling that you aredoing something that is worth your time and effort and it is worthwhile in the large scheme of things; competence is the confidence you feel in your ability to do your work well; self-determination is the freedom to choose how to do your work; and impact involves the sense that the task is proceeding and that you are actually accomplishing something and making a difference in the organization.

Together these individual dimensions of cognitive department climate suggest that if employees do not experience these cognitive elements of their work, they may become dissatisfied. Finally the level of work-family interference which describes the extent to which anemployee's work demands interfere with family

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responsibilities is also measuredthrough items developed by (Gutek, Searle & Kepa, 1991).

The instrumental climate facet is defined as follows: work processes, structure, and extrinsic rewards (Carr Schimdt, Ford & DeShon , 2003). The specific dimensions of instrumental climate selected in this study include: access to resources and time control. Access to resources includes access to work space, funds, support staff, supplies and materials. Time control on the other hand denotes the ability of employeesto control the time at work

and give priority to what

they perceived to be the

most important task at

hand.

4.2)Facets of QWL:

Organizational Support

Besides items relating to organizational climate, the level of support offered by the organization was also measured as an indication

of the work-life quality at an institution.

Perceived Organizational Support (POS) is defined as the extent to which employees perceive that the organization values their contributions and cares about their wellbeing. POS is a key factor in influencing employee commitment to the organization, job satisfaction, and general quality of work life. Many researchers have studied the relationship between perceived organizational support and work-life quality of workers and have found it to have a positive impact on organizational commitment, employee performance as well as job satisfaction (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002; Dixon & Sagas,2007).

4.3)Job Satisfaction

The relationship of job satisfaction with work life quality is another aspect of working life that is often investigated by researchers. Job satisfaction is one of the central variablesin work

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and is seen as an important indicator of working life quality. (Cohen, Kinnevy&Dichter, 2007; Aryee, Fields & Luk ,1999). This study utilized instrument developed byAryee et all (1999), which contained items to determine the extent to which theemployee is satisfied or is enthusiastic about his job. This part of feeling enthusiasticor having sense of enjoyment in one’s work is reflective of Herzberg’s Hygiene factors in his theory of motivation. (Herzberg, Mausner & Snyderman, 1967; Herzberg, 1968).

4.4)Quality Work Life (QWL), Job Satisfaction and Stress

Some of the elements that are relevant in determining an individual’s quality of work life would include the task, the physical work environment, social environment within the organization, administrative system and relationship between life on and off the job(Che Rose, Beh, Uli and Idris, 2006). A study conducted in Malaysia by Che Rose

et al (2006) further concluded that the most important predictor of QWL is organizational climate, followed by career achievement, career satisfaction and career balance.

Carr et al in their 2003 study used Ostroff’s (1993) taxonomy to organize dimensions labeled as workplace climate and then used meta-analytic techniques to test a path analytic model.

The results suggest that there are 3 higher order facets of climate (affective, cognitive, and instrumental) that affected individual level outcomes of job performance, psychological well-being, and withdrawal through their impact on organizational commitment and job satisfaction.

Employees’ source of stress and level of satisfaction regarding several aspect of work are also measured to get a better understanding of the overall QWL in the institution and although these aspects are not work

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life on their own, perception of quality of work life is often assessed using job satisfaction and organizational climate surveys (Krueger,Brazil, Lohfeld, Edward, Lewis, Tjam, 2002). The negative consequences of occupational stress are recognized as major problems for both employees and organizations. For employees, stress frequently contributes to the risk of accidents, burn-out and illnesses like coronary heart disease, hyper-tension and severe depression (Sutherland & Cooper, 1988) For organizations, stress-related problems result in low job satisfaction, poor quality of performance, increased absence from work and high turn over (Montowidlo, Packard & Manning, 1986).

5)RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

5.1)Data collection

Through various sites which is basically a secondary source of data collection for this research paper.

5.2)Tools for data analysis

Through case studies analysis this research paper was made and findings are according to the analysis of them and considering key factors which directly effect the quality of work life.

5.3)CASE STUDY

UNDERGONE

1) IBM India fosters work/ life balance for employees

IBM is sponsoring many “fun ‘n’ learn” activities for its employees and their children to encourage a work/ life balance, under the aegis of IBM Global Work/ Life Fund. The company emphasizes on Work/ Life balance as a key component to enhance the quality of life and productivity of every IBM employee across the globe. This year these activities will be organized through Genie Kids, a forerunner in innovative and effective child-development.

Between April 1 and May 31, 2002, IBM is sponsoring the ‘Young

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Explorers Summer Camp’, comprising programmes like Explorer’s Club, Hobby Club and Yoga Club. This camp is open for all children between four to twelve years at the Genie Kid Resource Centre. Commenting on IBM’s support of work/ life programme, Abraham Thomas, managing director, IBM India said, “IBM is committed in providing our employees with an attractive and comfortable working environment to maintain a healthy and productive lifestyle. This initiative will help our employees deal with the demands of home and family better in these times of hectic schedules and work pressure. Work/Life balance is a strategic initiative that helps IBM attract, motivate and retain the very best talent in the technology industry.”

The Resource Centre houses a library, activity based games, pottery classes, computer classes, etc. IBM employees can also attend parenting workshops.

The IBM Global Work/ Life Fund is a US$50 million fund launched in the year 2000 by Ted Childs, vice president, IBM Global Workforce Diversity. This fund aims to facilitate the development of innovative programmes around the world for IBM employees.

2)THE TAJ’S PEOPLE PHILOSOPHY and STAR SYSTEM

The employee at Taj is viewed as an asset and is the real profit centre. He or she is the very reason for our survival. The creation of the Taj People Philosophy displays our commitment to and belief in our people. We want an organisation with a very clear philosophy, where we can treasure people and build from within.

- Bernard Martyris,Senior Vice-President, HR,

Indian Hotels Company Limited (IHCL)

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Introduction

In March 2001, the Taj Group launched an employee loyalty program called the ‘Special Thanks and Recognition System’ (STARS). STARS was an initiative aimed at motivating employees to transcend their usual duties and responsibilities and have fun during work. This program also acknowledged and rewarded hard working employees who had achieved excellence in their work.

The Taj Group had always believed that their employees were their greatest assets and the very reason for the survival of their business. In 2000, to show its commitment to and belief in employees, the Taj Group developed the ‘Taj People Philosophy’ (TPP), which covered all the people practices of the group. TPP considered every aspect of employees’ organizational career planning, right from their induction into the company till their superannuation.

The Taj People Philosophy

Since its establishment, the Taj Group had a people-oriented culture. The group always hired fresh graduates from leading hotel management institutes all over India so that it could shape their attitudes and develop their skills in a way that fitted its needs and culture. The management wanted the new recruits to pursue a long-term career with the group. All new employees were placed in an intensive two-year training program, which familiarized them with the business ethos of the group, the management practices of the organization, and the working of the cross-functional departments.

.The group believed that talent management was of utmost importance to develop a sustainable competitive advantage. The group aimed at making the HR function a critical business partner, rather than just a support function. To further show its commitment to and belief in employees, the group created the ‘Taj

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People Philosophy’ (TPP) covering all people practices of the group. The concept of TPP, developed in 199,was the brainchild of Bernard Martyris, Senior Vice-President, HR, IHCL, and his core team. The concept, originally planned to be called as ‘The Womb to Tomb Approach’, covered all the aspects of an employee’s career, from joining the group until his/her retirement. TPP was based on the key points of the Taj employee charter.

It was developed in line with the Tata Business Excellence Model (TBEM). Explaining the rationale for implementing the philosophy, Martyris said, “It is to achieve that international benchmarking in hospitality, and HR must fit into it”. According to him, the three major areas of TPP included work systems and processes, learning and development and employee welfare.

As part of the TPP, the Taj Group introduced a strong performance management system, called the Balanced Scorecard System (BSS) that linked

individual performance with the group’s overall strategy. BSS was based on a model developed by Kalpan and Nortan, and focused on enhancing both individual as well as enterprise performance. BSS measured the performance of employees across all hierarchical levels against a set of predefined targets and identified their variances. Martyris explained, “We are looking at a matrix form of organization which cuts across hierarchy. It is important to understand the potential of people”. Therefore, BSS was implemented even at the lowest levels of hierarchy.

The group also took strong measures to weed out under-performers. The group adopted the 360-degree feedback system to evaluate the performance of all top officials, from the managing director to departmental managers, in which they were evaluated by their immediate subordinates. The 360-degree feedback was followed by personal

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interviews in individuals to counsel them to overcome their deficiencies.

The Taj Group also established Centers of Excellence for its 14,000 employees at five locations in India, including Jaipur, Bangalore, Ernakulam, Chennai and Hyderabad. At these centers, departmental heads in each functional area were trained. These departmental heads later trained their own staff. The training included foundation modules and accreditation programs that familiarized the employees with Taj standards. Apart from adopting stringent measures to improve performance, Taj also recognized and rewarded its best employees across all levels of the organization. For this purpose, Taj created a unique employee identification tracking and reward program known as STARS. Describing the program, Martyris said, “It’s an HR initiative aimed at creating an association ‘between our star performers and our brand, the Taj’”.

The Star System

The STAR system (STARS) was the brainchild of Martyris. The system was developed in accordance with Taj’s core philosophy that ‘happy employees lead to happy customers’. STARS, operative throughout the year (from April to March), was open to all employees across the organization, at all hierarchical levels. It aimed to identify, recognize and reward those employees who excelled in their work. STARS was actively promoted across the group’s 62 chain of hotels and among its 18,000 employees globally, out of which 15,000 were from India.

STARS had five different levels. Though employees did not receive any cash awards, they gained recognition by the levels they attained through the points they accumulated for their acts of kindness or hospitality. ‘Level 1’ was known as the ‘Silver Grade’. To reach this level, employees had to

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accumulate 120points in three months. To attain ‘Level 2’, known as the ‘Gold Grade’, employees had to accumulate 130 points within three months of attaining the silver grade. To reach ‘Level 3’, called the ‘Platinum Grade’, employees had to accumulate 250 points within sic months of attaining the gold grade. To attain ‘Level 4’, employees had to accumulate 510 or more points, but below 760points, to be a part of the Chief Operating Officer’s club. ‘Level 5’ which was the highest level in STARS, enabled employees to be a part of the MD’s club, if they accumulated 760 or more points. Points were granted to employees on the basis of parameters like integrity, honesty, kindness, respect for customers, environmental awareness, teamwork, coordination, cooperation, excellence in work, new initiatives, trustworthiness, courage, conviction, among others. Suggestions by employees that benefited the organization fetched them significant points. Such suggestions in

each hotel of the Taj Group were examined by the General Manager and training manager of the hotel the employee worked in. the suggestions could also be posted on the Web, which were constantly monitored. Employees could also earn points through appreciation by customers, ‘compliment-a-colleague’ forums and various suggestion schemes. Employees could also get ‘default points’ if the review committee did not give feedback to the employee within two days of his/her offering a suggestion for the betterment of the organization. In such cases, the employee concerned was awarded ’20 default points’. Hence, in an indirect manner, the system compelled judges of the review committee to give feedback to employees as early as possible. STARS helped employees work together as a team and appreciate fellow employees for their acts of kindness and excellence. It enhanced their motivation levels and led to increased customer satisfaction. In one case, a bellboy in one of the group’s hotel who

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received an American customer wen out of his way to care for the customer. Noticing that the customer, who had arrived late at night, was suffering from cold, he offered to bring him a doctor. However, the customer refused the boy’s offer. The bellboy then, on his own, offered a glass of warm water mixed with ginger and honey, a traditional Indian home remedy for cough and cold. The customer felt surprised and also happy at the bellboy’s gesture. He left a note of appreciation for him, which added to his existing points.

The STARS program seemed to have generated lot of attention among the employees at the Taj Group. During the initial phase, not every hotel seemed to be serious about adopting STARS, but after the first awards ceremony was conducted, every hotel in the group reportedly became very serious about the implementation of STARS. Reportedly, customer satisfaction levels increased significantly after the implementation of STARS.

Commenting on the success of STARS, Martyris said, “After the campaign was launched, a large number of employees have started working together in the true spirit of teams and this helps us value our human capital. There are stars all around us but very often we look only at stars outside the system. Many employees do that extra bit and go that extra mile, out of the way to dazzle the customer satisfaction with employee recognition. Employee recognition is hence, directly linked to customer satisfaction. It is a recognition for the people, of the people and by the people”. STARS was also used by the group as an appraisal system, in addition to its regular appraisal system.

The Future

The STARS was not only successful as an HR initiative, but it brought many strategic benefits to the group as well. The service standards at all hotels of the group improved significantly

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because the employees felt that their good work was being acknowledged and appreciated. This resulted in repeat customers for Taj hotels. And because of STARS, the Group won the ‘Hermes Award 2002’ for ‘best innovation in HR’ in the hospitality industry. Analysts felt that the fame and recognition associated with the winning of the Hermes award would place the Taj Group of hotels at the top of the list of the best hotels in the world. The group also received requests for setting up hotels in Paris (France), where the ‘Hermes award’ function took place. The HR practices at the Taj Group attracted several Human Resources and Organizational Behavior experts world over. In late 2001, Thomas J Delong, a professor of Organizational Behavior from Harvard Business School (HBS), visited India and interviewed various employees in the Taj Group. After his visit, the Taj Group was “envisioned as an example of organizational transformation wherein key dimensions of cultural

change went into the making of global managers”. Analysts also felt that social responsibility and people-centric programs were the core values of the Taj Group, which were well demonstrated through the ‘Taj People Philosophy’. Martyris said, “The challenges here lay in retaining the warmth and relationship focus of the Ta and inculcating a system-driven approach to service”.

Analysts felt that the Taj Group had been highly successful because of its ability to provide better opportunities and gave greater recognition to its employees, which motivated them to work to the best of their abilities. The Employee Retention Rate (ERR) of the Taj Group was the highest in the hospitality industry because of its employee-oriented initiatives.. He said, “Our staff is routinely poached by not just industry competitors but also banks, call centers and others. In 2002, in the placement process at the hotel management institute run by the Taj, more than

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half of those passing out were hired by non-hospitality companies. While we are happy to see the growth and opportunity for this sector, we also feel there is a need for introspection. Are we offering swift and smooth career paths to our employees? How am I to retain staffers from moving across industries?

6)DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS

This research attempts to find out the influence of employees’ perception of work-life quality towards job satisfaction. As per findings from the previous researches the independent variables which use to determine the employees’ perception toward QWL as a whole are proven to be directly related to job satisfaction. These findings are consistent with the ones in previous researches for example by Hagedorn (1994) as well as Olsen and Near (1994) as reported in Johnsrud (2002); where work life variables such as salary, perceived support of

colleagues, satisfaction with the administration,work and non work conflict have been proven to directly affects or are predictive of job satisfaction. However, the insignificance of the variables individually in determining job satisfaction except for meaningfulness, pessimism and autonomy, perhaps point to the fact that there are other elements which influence job satisfaction that we didn’t address in this study. Herzberg’s two factor theory (Herzberg et al, 1967; Herzberg, 1968) for instance identifies two sets of factors, motivator and hygiene to be instrumental as sources of job satisfaction or job dissatisfaction. While the instrument used in this study on secondary data employ some of the factors indicated, some others that represent the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards for example the competitiveness of employees’ pay, opportunity for career advancement or fringe benefits as well as awards and other kinds of recognition for good performance was taken

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through above case studies analysis, hence the said findings of this study. For the academia, career advancement has always been based on paper qualification as well as the number of researches published and presented. Hence room for knowledge pursuit in their chosen field of expertise is absolutely critical. The contribution of meaningfulness, pessimism and autonomy elements to job satisfaction as compared to the other individual dimensions are seen in the cases and conform to the findings of previous researches on cognitive elements and their relationship with job satisfaction (Speitzer et. al, 1997) and the correlation between affective facet and organization climate (Wanous et. al, 2000). Indian job market is becoming more saturated as the number of educated population increased. Being competent is seen as a job requirement, a necessity to obtain a job and stay employed rather than a factor to determine satisfaction level. Despite the increasing level of competition and short span of technical life-cycle in

the education industry, keeping abreast with new technology is rated as the least cause of stress by the respondents implying that they are confident with their level of competence. In fact with such confidence and competence the staff of the university can and will be more satisfied if given ample autonomy in carrying out their job. An organization which believes in autonomy would empower its people rather creating stress among the employees by tangling them in red tapes. But the analysis said that institutional procedures as one of the sources of stress. They also single out involvement in unproductive committee work as stress originator. It is not surprising to see institutional procedures causing a lot of stress among the employees. Being a top in the industry, the company has to contend with policies and regulations not only from the Ministry ie Indian industrial laws but also regulations by the Companies Commission (as a private limited company). Autonomy is

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extremely important to go through any project & in carrying out their duties

7)CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

The present study indicated that QWL variables only are insufficient to measure employees’ job satisfaction. The findings from the study were partly inconsistent with the previous research done in this area. Data collection for this study was done by secondary data and study of various literature already present in the market. We suggest that future studies in this area be made independent of the human resource or any department in the sample organizations so that a fair response can be extracted. Future research on job satisfaction in the any industry should also include other dimensions of job satisfaction especially on the intrinsic rewards and key performance indicators or the performance evaluation criteria used by the sample organizations in evaluating their employees.

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