Quality of Work Life – A Study of Municipal Employees in Odisha

This paper is an empirical study which presents the quality of work life of municipal employees in Odisha. Municipal employees are those who are mostly responsible for the improvement of quality of urban life. While taking care of health, education, cleanliness, safety and so on they do promote comfort for the urban population. They too constitute a part of urban life. Therefore, authors of the paper considered it important to analyse the quality of work life of those employees. The study with social relevance is a feedback to the authorities to ascertain the facts and adopt necessary measures to improve the Quality of Work Life (QWL) of these employees to (generate) their motivation and commitment. The study is based on an opinion survey of 380 employees of different age, sex, experience and grade taken from 40 urban local bodies, who were selected on a random sampling method. The opinions, analysed through various statistical methods, revealed the facts that are placed here systematically.

Data reveal that the employees are not satisfied with the pay and remuneration, career growth, promotion and transfer policy, welfare measures, social security, participative decision–making system and so on. They feel less privileged when they compare themselves with their counterparts in government and PSUs. Even the field workers and young employees are not happy with the recognition system and feel mostly neglected. The temporary workers are quite unhappy with the conditions of work.

The findings of the study reveal that quality of work life of municipal employees’ needs improvement in all aspects ranging from pay to recognition. Improvement in QWL will help generating their commitment for work which will ultimately contribute towards achievement of organisational objective.