From the Asociación RUVID press release via AlphaGalileo:
Universitat de València’s lecturers Amparo Caballer and José María Peiró, both from Facultat de Psicologia, reveals that job uncertainty is directly and negatively related with one’s satisfaction with life and work, and it affects performance and professional commitment. This study, published on the journal The Spanish Journal of Psychology, also stresses that the consequences of that uncertainty depend on the occupational groups.
The study affirms that the feeling of losing one’s job decreases the satisfaction levels regarding other aspects of life such as family, health, economic situation and work-free time relation.
As the fear of losing one’s job increases ‘it also increases the level of job uncertainty; people are less satisfied with their personal, professional and family life and less committed with their job’, said Amparo Caballer, lecturer of social psychology, researcher at Universitat de València’s Facultat de Psicologia and co-author of the study.
This analysis, as the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology’s Servicio de Información y Noticias Científicas has informed, reveals that the consequences of job uncertainty are different depending on the occupational group. The analysis distinguishes three groups: blue collar workers, white collar workers and ‘professionals’. People developing a low qualified work are in the first group; people doing a skilled job are in the second group: clerks, administrative assistants, etc. Doctors, engineers and nurses are in the ‘professionals’ group.
When job uncertainty arises, blue collar workers ‘are less satisfied and less performing workers than the other two groups’, explains Caballer. Facing instability, white collar workers show the highest labour dissatisfaction.
But not all the employees face the instability in the same way. Some groups react more negatively when they sense job uncertainty, so the authors suggest not treat the problem in the same way for the different groups of employees in a company.
Temporary or permanent
The data from the study comes from the surveys made to 321 employees. 51.4% were people working at hospitals, 25.7% were people working at supermarkets and commercial distribution companies, and 22.9% were employees at temporary work companies.
The average age of the employees was 32 years. 66% had a permanent position and 34% had other types of contract. ‘For this kind of studies, the permanent or temporary contract is an important variable’, informs Caballer. From all the employees, 74.3% were women and 25.7% were men. It is probably because, as the expert says, ‘in those sectors most of the employees are women, and thus the most part of the surveys come from women.’