Publicação

The difference in mental well-being between self-employed and employees

Ver documento

Detalhes bibliográficos
Resumo:With this article we hope to break open a deeper discussion about the differences between self-employed and employees. We answer our research question: Is there a difference in the mental well-being of self-employed and employees? Are the predictors of mental wellbeing on self-employees’ and employees the same? In order to provide an answer, we use the Effort-Rewards Imbalance (ERI) model as a theoretical framework to understand how the quality of work is associated with mental wellbeing in self-employed people and employees. As a dataset we use The European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS). Within this dataset we reconstructed the ERI scale and tested our hypotheses using a hierarchical linear regression. Our results show that self-employed people report better mental well-being when compared to employees. Moreover, our results suggest that the predictors of self-employees’ mental well-being are different from the predictors of employees’ mental well-being. Rewards, such as empowerment, career advancement, social support from colleagues and satisfaction with wage, are positively related with employees’ mental well-being. The self-employed have only empowerment, social support and wage satisfaction associated with mental well-being. Efforts like work pace, interruptions, ergonomic risks and emotional strain are negatively related with employees’ mental well-being. None of them appear to be detrimental for self-employees’ mental well-being. In fact, interruptions even seem to be positively associated with self-employees’ mental well-being. Our results also indicate that the self-employment status interacts with an effortreward imbalance (an imbalance means higher efforts than rewards at work) in the prediction of participants’ self-reported mental well-being.
Autores principais:Berghen, Zino-Carlos Van den
Assunto:Trabalhador independente Trabalhador por conta de outrem Condições de trabalho Qualidade dos serviços Bem-estar Entrepreneurs Employees Mental well-being Quality of Work Effort Reward Imbalance Model
Ano:2016
País:Portugal
Tipo de documento:dissertação de mestrado
Tipo de acesso:acesso aberto
Instituição associada:ISCTE
Idioma:inglês
Origem:Repositório ISCTE
Descrição
Resumo:With this article we hope to break open a deeper discussion about the differences between self-employed and employees. We answer our research question: Is there a difference in the mental well-being of self-employed and employees? Are the predictors of mental wellbeing on self-employees’ and employees the same? In order to provide an answer, we use the Effort-Rewards Imbalance (ERI) model as a theoretical framework to understand how the quality of work is associated with mental wellbeing in self-employed people and employees. As a dataset we use The European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS). Within this dataset we reconstructed the ERI scale and tested our hypotheses using a hierarchical linear regression. Our results show that self-employed people report better mental well-being when compared to employees. Moreover, our results suggest that the predictors of self-employees’ mental well-being are different from the predictors of employees’ mental well-being. Rewards, such as empowerment, career advancement, social support from colleagues and satisfaction with wage, are positively related with employees’ mental well-being. The self-employed have only empowerment, social support and wage satisfaction associated with mental well-being. Efforts like work pace, interruptions, ergonomic risks and emotional strain are negatively related with employees’ mental well-being. None of them appear to be detrimental for self-employees’ mental well-being. In fact, interruptions even seem to be positively associated with self-employees’ mental well-being. Our results also indicate that the self-employment status interacts with an effortreward imbalance (an imbalance means higher efforts than rewards at work) in the prediction of participants’ self-reported mental well-being.