Studying the relation of quality of work life with socio-economic status and general health among the employees working in Students Welfare Fund of Ministry of Health and Medical Education in 2016

Abstract

Introduction: The importance of socio-economic variables such as level of literacy, income, and occupational status and their impact on the physical and psychological well-being of the people is clear for experts and policymakers. In much research, the root of increase in life expectancy and improvement in other indexes of health is considered to not only progress medicine, but also improve socio-economic indexes. Thus, the present study aims to determine the relation between socioeconomic status and general health and the consequences of disease on the quality of work life of the employees working in Students Welfare Fund of Ministry of Health and Medical Education. Methodology: The present cross-sectional research is of descriptive-analytical type, that has been conducted in Students Welfare Fund of Ministry of Health and Medical Education in 2016, and the population under study included all the 130 employees working in the Students Welfare Fund. The required data was collected by consensus method and Quality of Work life (QWL) questionnaire. This questionnaire was based on Walton components and Socio-economic Status (SES) questionnaire, and was designed in order to evaluate socio-economic status, and had 4 components. The data on general health was collected by Goldberg and Hillier 28-Item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28) (1979). Then, the collected data was recorded by SPSS version 18 software and was analyzed by common methods of descriptive-analytical statistics. Results: The results demonstrated that the frequency of socio-economic status of the employees under study were 73 persons (57.9 percent) for low level, 45 persons (35.7 percent) for moderate level, and 8 persons (6.3 percent) for high level, and the frequency of the quality of work life of the employees under study were 7 persons (5.6 percent) for low level, 40 persons (32.3 percent) for moderate level, and 77 persons (62.1 percent) for high level. Conclusion: Considering the importance of quality of work life in socio-economic status, it is proposed that the following measures be taken into account: appropriateness of salary to the economic factors like inflation; demand and supply in fair and adequate payment; paying more attention to the physical conditions of workplace, e.g. light, cooling and heating facilities to prepare a secure and healthy workplace; preparing some possibilities for the employees so that they can further develop their personal talents and have opportunities for making progress in their specialized field by encouraging creativity and innovation that leads to the promotion of the organization; and providing continuous security and growth opportunities for the employees, allowing them to do of their own free will, and providing any information or skill that they need in the workplace to develop their human capabilities. In the present study, there is a significant relationship between the quality of work life and general health and also socio-economic status and general health, however, there was no significant relationship between quality of work life and socio-economic status.