Quality of Life and its Components’ Measurement

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to define the quality of life (QOL) and the quality of working life (QOWL) con-ceptions and their components, to establish the quality of life evaluation and to report the results of the employee’s quality of working life research. Quality of life is influenced by an individual’s physi-cal and mental health, the degree of independency, the social relationship with the environment and other fac-tors. Quality of life could be defined as an individual’s satisfaction with his or her life dimensions comparing with his or her ideal life. Evaluation of the quality of life depends on one’s value system. The quality of working life could be defined as work place strategies, processes and environment combination, which stimulates employee’s job satisfaction. It also de-pends on work conditions and organization’s efficiency. The quality of life model includes seven factors and indicators to represent these factors. This model was used in the study. The objective of the study was to evalu-ate the quality of life and the quality of working life value of the particular organization’s employees. 26 men and 15 women working in the middle-sized industrial organization were surveyed. They were asked to evaluate seven domains of QOL and QOWL: physical state, material state, emotional state, social relationship, education and self-improvement, self-expression and lei-sure, safety and environment. The study enabled to find out that the employees are more satisfied with quality of life (3.47 points) than qual-ity of working life (3.45 points). The respondents are least satisfied with their material state. Quality of life directly correlates with quality of working life (r  0.76). Employees quality of working life value and their seven factors have a moderately correlation (r  0.55-0.66). While quality of life highly correlates with physical state (r  0.84), material state (r  0.71). Social – demo-graphic elements have less influence on quality of life and quality of working life estimation. The research findings show that studied organization has possibilities to increase its employees’ quality of life and loyalty by improving working conditions and envi-ronment. High value of the quality of working life directly influences higher quality of life.