• Areas of Expertise:
  • Business and society
  • Diversity
  • Employment status
  • Gender
  • Health
  • Human capital
  • Industrial change
  • Industrial relations
  • Labour market
  • Participation at work
  • Population and society
  • Quality of life
  • Quality of work
  • Social cohesion
  • Social protection
  • Time
  • Work-life balance
  • Work organisation

Quality of work

Overview

A better quality of working life, together with the promotion of employment and entrepreneurship, are central to the European Union's employment strategy and social policy agenda.

In the past, Eurofound has examined issues such as: the quality of employment and working conditions, including work organisation; and access to employment, self-employment and opportunities and support for labour market participation. Following many years of research in these areas, a series of Foundation papers was compiled, based on these themes.

More recently, Eurofound studies have focused on four key dimensions of quality of work and employment: ensuring career and employment security; maintaining the health and well-being of workers; developing skills and competencies; reconciling work-life balance. Eurofound continues to build on its research in these broad areas, as well as other areas such as occupational health, absenteeism, stress and violence and harassment. The European Observatory on Working Conditions (EWCO) continues to develop.

The fieldwork for the fifth pan-European working conditions survey took place from January to April 2010, first results were available end 2010, and the full overview report was published in April 2012.