Working Life Barometer in the Baltic Countries 2002 (pdf) - mol.fi

Private sector
Public sector
Men
Women
under 30 years
30-49 years
50+ years
All
179
DEGREE OF INFLUENCE ON WORK TEMPO
Estonian employees
54%
51%
54%
52%
55%
54%
49%
52%
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
totally rather a lot
In Estonia, the differences between the sectors are not as great as in the other
two Baltic countries. The private-sector wage earners considered that they had
slightly better chances of influencing their work pace than did the public-sector
personnel. The gaps between the men and women in this case were also
small. What is more conspicuous is that an examination according to age
groups reveals a somewhat weaker position for the ageing workers compared
with the rest. Wage earners over 50 viewed their potential for influencing their
work tempo less favourably than the under-50s.
SHARING RESPONSIBILITY AT THE WORKPLACE
A separate index 7 was used to measure the (de)centralisation of power of decision.
The reason for this aspect of the survey was the idea that not only the
workers' productivity but also their competence and job satisfaction increase if
7 In this study, the responsibility index is formed rather simply through three questions: Who normally
executes the following work tasks at your workplace? 1) daily planning of own work, 2) weekly
planning of own work, 3) quality control. The answering options and their rating were: employee
him/herself (2 points), employees together (1 point), foreman (-1 point) and management or someone
else (-2 points). If the person interviewed could not answer, he/she was recorded as 'data missing'. The
points were added up to give the index, the maximum being 6 and the minimum –6. The figure in the
table is the arithmetic mean of the index.