Job quality and flexible practices: An investigation of employee perceptions

Abstract

Job quality debates in Australia are dominated by two major concerns: the skill level of employees and the growing incidence of contingent employment. The Hackman and Oldham (1980) job quality model provides the theoretical basis for an investigation of a major aspect of job quality (‘skill variety’) among both casual and permanent employees. This article reports the findings of three investigations using data from 3,097 employees collected from a longitudinal study in Australia. The first investigation compared the job quality perceptions of permanent and casual employees; the second examined the perceptions of full-time casual employees and part-time casual employees relative to permanent employees; and the third examined the impact of ongoing casual employment on the perceived level of job quality. The findings demonstrate that employees in casual jobs – especially those in part-time casual jobs – perceived that they had lower job quality than employees in permanent work. Employees who were engaged in casual employment in both 2001 and 2002 were more likely to report low job quality in 2002.

Keywords:

• casual employment
• contingent employment
• job quality
• skill variety
• flexible work practices