Wellbeing of people with temporary contracts
Is employability a factor that protects temporary employees against decrease in wellbeing?
Master Thesis, MSc Human Resource Management University of Groningen, Faculty of Economic and Business
January, 2015 Aline Goldschmidt Student number: 1767895 Gelderse Roostraat 84 9741KN Groningen E-mail: a.m.goldschmidt@student.rug.nl
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ABSTRACT
A steady increase in temporary employment makes the effects of temporary employment an interesting research field. By looking into data of two Europeans Social Surveys this study tries to identify whether temporary contracts have a negative influence on wellbeing and what underlying factors do play a role. Wellbeing is a heavily valued factor as outcome variable as a high level of wellbeing describes an overall life satisfaction, happiness and health. We found that job insecurity is higher for temporary employed people than permanent employed people. We also found that a high level of job insecurity is related to a lower level of wellbeing. But in contrast to what we expected people with a temporary contract do not score lower on wellbeing than permanent employed people. Employability can function as a buffer on job insecurity, but only people with a permanent contract experience a higher wellbeing, when having a high level of employability. And young and highly educated people with a temporary contract do no differ from their older and lower educated counterpart in terms of employability and wellbeing. At least for in the Netherlands we can conclude that wellbeing, is stronger influenced by having a partner, having an income that is high enough and have a good health, than it is by job insecurity.
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1. INTRODCUTION
During the last two decades much effort has been undertaken to work towards a flexible labour market (Mangan, 2000). The need for a flexible labour market was induced by technological change and an increasing female labour force participation, which started in the 80’s and is a still ongoing process (De Cuyper, Isaksson, & De Witte, 2005). Companies and politicians believe that a flexible labour market brings down the risk of high employment costs in times of crisis, so it is not surprising that the growth of temporary employment has started during times of economic recession. Also, the willingness of companies to give people permanent contracts, might decrease in a wide labor market (Holmlund & Storrie, 2002). So it is likely that the economic crisis that started in 2008 has speed up the process towards more temporary contracts again. Temporary contracts are increasingly common in the Netherlands and in whole Europe. While in 2002 14.4% percent of the working population of the Netherlands had a temporary employment contract it was increased to 20.6 % by 2013 (Eurostat, 2014).
With the increase of temporary contracts the interest in the effects of temporary contracts also increased. While psychological and economic research found a solid negative effect of unemployment on personal wellbeing (Green, 2011), scientific findings on the effect of a temporary contract on wellbeing are mixed. There are two different perspectives on temporary employment contracts. Bardasi & Francesconi (2004), found that on the one hand, temporary work can be desirable for employees who want to have more control over their working schedule for a better work-life balance. And Booth, Francesconi, & Frank (2002) found that some people also may consider temporary employment as a necessary stepping-stone towards a more permanent position in the labour market. On the other hand, temporary jobs are associated with an increase in job insecurity, decrease in wage compared to permanent jobs and are more likely to be characterized by poorer working conditions (Booth et al., 2002; Blanchard and Landier, 2002). The different views on temporary employment could explain why results on wellbeing of temporary contracted employees are mixed.
4 contract above a permanent contract. So a broad distinction can be made between the exploited involuntary temporary worker and a new type of voluntary boundaryless worker. This new type of worker who is not overly focused on getting a permanent contracts is independent and has a high level of employability (Arthur & Rousseau, 1995). Most people, who make an active choice towards a boundaryless career are young and highly educated people (Marler et al., 2002). For them as highly educated young people the advantages might outperform the disadvantages, mentioned earlier, which might explain why they don’t experience a decrease in wellbeing.
One of the advantages of young and highly educated people might be that they are highly employable. Giving employability as a resilience factor for not seeing a decrease on wellbeing is rarely looked into in the literature. We will contribute to the literature by analysing data of the European Social Survey (ESS) of 2004 and 2010. Those were the only years so far that work life balance was part of the ESS as it is one of the rotating modules. We will analyse whether employees with a temporary contract experience lower wellbeing than people with permanent contracts, and whether young and highly educated people can be seen as a different group within temporary workers. As we assume that young and highly educated people are highly employable, we think that they might belong to a group of people that choose temporary employment. We analyse the data of the ESS to answer the question whether employability functions as a buffer for a decrease in wellbeing for temporary employed people.
The research question is: Is employability a factor that protects temporary employees
against decrease in wellbeing?
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2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND Job insecurity
Job insecurity is defined as an overall concern about the continued employment in the future (Sverke & Hellgren, 2002). Sverke and Hellgren (2002) also say that job insecurity is a subjective perception that is only experienced directly by the person. No two persons experience the same amount of job insecurity while being in the same kind of situation, due to differences in character as well as in other factors like employability.
Recent changes in labour market induced the impression that instability is a permanent factor and no one can feel secure in his or her job, even though a relatively small amount of people actually lose their job (Elman & O’Rand, 2002; Schmidt, 2000). Heery and Salmon (2000) called this phenomenon insecurity paradox; they found in their research that the proportion of employees that felt that their job was under threat was clearly higher than could be expected on the basis of actual job stability. So even though we thought job insecurity is something particularly temporary employed people would suffer from, findings show that employees with a permanent contract can experience job insecurity. One explanation why people with permanent contracts experience a high level of job insecurity could be that people with a permanent contract feel they have more to lose in a situation where his or her job is perceived as insecure (Klandermans et al., 2010).
Job insecurity has a lot of negative influence on organizational variables. De Witte and Näswall (2003) found that employees with a permanent contract who experienced high levels of job insecurity, were less satisfied with their job and less committed to the organization than employees with a low level of perceived job security. So while it is not to ignore that also people with permanent contract can experience a higher level of job insecurity, still research shows a higher level of job insecurity for employees with temporary contract than permanent contracts (Booth et al., 2002; Blanchard & Landier, 2002).
Hypothesis 1: People with a temporary contract experience more job insecurity than people with a permanent contract.
Wellbeing
6 complains (Gazzaniga & Heatherton, 2003). As job insecurity can be a big stressor in people’s life, there are studies that found that people with a temporary employment contract are less satisfied with their job than people with a permanent employment contract (Sulsky & Smith, 2005; Booth et al., 2002). And job satisfaction is seen as one of the major domains that contribute to subjective wellbeing (Van Praag et al. 2003).
But conclusions from research whether temporary contracts lead to a decrease in wellbeing are mixed. While some studies conclude that flexible contracts are associated with greater satisfaction, other researchers found reduced satisfaction among employees with flexible contracts compared with permanent contracts (Connelly & Gallagher 2004; Virtanen et al., 2005). There is expected to be more than just one factor having influence on whether temporary employment has a positive or a negative influence on wellbeing. One of the positive aspects of flexible working contracts is that people experience a high level of autonomy which enables people to be in a position to work with more flexible schedules and finding their own work life balance. This suggests that some people could choose a temporary contract above a permanent contract in exchange for more autonomy. But as mentioned earlier, in times of crisis employers might not offer a permanent contract. So if workers in flexible staffing contracts are not able to find alternative contracts and are crowded into a limited labour market that consists of only flexible contracts, temporary contract would not be a choice for most people. As Guest (2004) found that only about one third of temporary employed people prefer this type of contract, about 70 % of all people are in a contract without being in their contract of choice. It might not come as a surprise that workers express greater job satisfaction when they view their temporary work as a choice rather than resulting from a lack of alternatives (Ellingson et al., 1998).
Hypotheses 2a: Employees that experience high level of job insecurity experience lower well-being than people with a low level of job insecurity.
Hypotheses 2b: Employees with temporary contracts experiences lower wellbeing than people with permanent contract.
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Hypothesis 3: Job insecurity mediates the effect of a temporary contract on wellbeing.
Employability
Employability refers to the ability of an individual to find and sustain employment. Green (2011) found that a high level of perceived employability can protect for the negative effects of perceived job insecurity on wellbeing, such as expected loss of income. He also found that employability can make a direct positive difference on wellbeing as employability gives employees the chance to change job, if they do not like their current job (Green, 2011). As todays labour market changes, career paths and career perspectives of people changes as well. There is a new phenomenon that people leave behind the idea of having permanent employment at the same organisation for the rest of their life. Job hopping getting a common model of career development for most people (DeFillippi & Arthur, 1994). Another new development is described by Guest (2004), he found by analysing several studies, that about one third of all people in temporary contracts have a preference for temporary contracts above permanent contract. For this group of people it might be true that people with a temporary contract have a high job satisfaction or a high level of life satisfaction. Kunda et al. (2002) stated that when individuals become ‘boundaryless’, their security stems from their own skills and ability to sell those skills. Their security does not usually stem from keeping their jobs, but is based on the idea that they can easily find another job.
As employability has a direct influence on job search activities and self-esteem for the future career, it leads to an increase in life satisfaction as it gives a person greater control over his or her career path (Knabe & Rätzel, 2008), while lack of employability might lead to even greater dissatisfaction as people easily getting stuck in a job they are not satisfied with, even though the job is secure.
Hypotheses 4a: Employees with high perceived employability experience less job insecurity than people with low perceived employability.
Hypotheses 4b: Employees with temporary contracts with high employability have a higher wellbeing than employees with temporary contracts and low employability. Boundaryless career – the young and highly educated
8 people differ from permanent employed people? Roger (2000) suggest that the only factor that temporary workers have in common, is that they are temporary employment contracts, but they differ by what it means for them because it is determined by their age, their gender and their education level.
We already explained the idea of boundaryless career, so even though the majority of the temporary employees might still be the low skilled workers who don’t have a choice and who don’t fit into the idea of the boundaryless career, there are also a growing number of professional and high skilled positions on temporary contracts (Cohany, 1996; Segal & Sullivan, 1997a).
Young and highly educated people don’t experience the boundaries older employees see later in their career. They might especially value the autonomy and flexibility temporary employment offers. Especially people in the middle of their working life might experience more negative effect due to an increase in job insecurity. Being unemployed in generally more difficult for people in the age of 30–50 years than it is for other age groups, mostly because of responsibilities for a partner and children, relatively high living costs and the need of a steady income (De Witte, 1999; Sverke et al., 2002). Unemployment at younger age might be least stressful as young people just stay in their role of just graduated for a bit longer, while people that are older my consider early retirement instead of searching for a new job (De Witte, 1999; Sverke et al., 2002). Also is expected that especially young and highly educated people are more interested in personal and skill development. While possibility for skills development within organizations decline, people might experience having different employers as more positive for their skill development and their career opportunities. Especially if they perceive employers not to invest in skill development directly. Those people don’t perceive job insecurity as a problem, as they seeking for skill development and see new job opportunities are great challenges. Their job security is rooted in how easy they can find a new job after finished their today’s project (Kunda, Barley, & Evans, 2002). In that sense it is highly related to employability. So a high level of skills and skills development is an important component of a boundaryless career. With the labour market changing towards a knowledge economy young and highly educated people may have an advantage above low educated people in term of employment choice.
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Hypothesis 6: Young and highly educated people with a temporary contract have higher wellbeing than other employees on a temporary contract.
3. METHOGOLOGY
Our data source is the second edition and the fifth edition of the European Social Survey (ESS), obtained in 2004 and in 2010. The ESS questionnaire includes two main sections, a ‘core’ module which remains relatively constant from round to round, plus two or more ‘rotating’ modules. The aim of the core module is to monitor change and continuity in a wide range of social variables. Work life balance was the rotating module in the second and the fifth round of the ESS so we combined those two studies. The data can be obtained freely via internet download from the Norwegian Social Science Data Services website (http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/).
As only data from the Netherlands is used, a country specific file of 2004 and 2010 was downloaded. An independent-samples t-testwas used to verify whether the data from both datasets are equal. Results from the independent-samples t-test showed that the means of most variables are equal. Therefore both datasets were merged into one dataset. The code of the question given at every variable we used, refers to the questionnaire used in 2004.
Variables
The combined dataset was split into people that answered “paid work” on the question: Doing last 7 days: (F8a). Those people, who worked, were further divided into people that worked with a temporary contract and those with a permanent contract (F14). The range of age were restricted from 20 till 60 (F3). The number of participants we included in the analysis was 1621, from which 1379 worked with a permanent contract and 242 on a temporary contract. 747 were male and 874 were female. Of the 1379 employees with a permanent contract 524 worked part-time and of the 242 employees who worked with temporary contract 110 worked part-time.
Wellbeing For measuring general wellbeing we combined the two questions about life
10 from 00 (extremely unhappy/dissatisfied) to 10 (extremely happy/satisfied), the option to answer “Don’t know” is available to the respondent as well. Cronbachs alpha is .829, from which we concluded that the internal constancy is high and both questions measure the same construct. For all hypotheses in which we used the variable wellbeing we controlled for age (F3), sex (F2), having a partner (F35), children living at home (F69), health (C7), subjective income (F33) and working part-time as those shown to have influence on wellbeing (Van der Meer & Wielers, 2013). Working part-time is measured in the ESS by Total hours normally worked per week in main job overtime included (F21). Part-time is 0 till 32 hours a week and fulltime is everything from 33 hours on. Wellbeing were the dependent variable in this research. Health and subjective income had to be recoded in order to have a consistent analysis. Sex, having children, having a partner and working parttime were recoded into dummy variables.
Job insecurity We measured job insecurity with the level of agreement on the
proposition: Job is secure (G66). It is measured on a 4 point scale running from ‘totally not agree’ (1) to ‘totally agree’ (4).
Employability is measured by ‘Get similar or better job with another employer’ (G77).
The answer is measured on an eleven-point scale ranging from 00 (extremely difficult) to 10 (extremely easy). 1428 people answered this question.
Age Young people is defined as being 20- 35 years old and old people are divined as 36
till 65. This range has been used previously by Elchardus and Smits (2007).
Education What is the highest degree you finished?’ (F6) running from did not finish
elementary school till having a PhD degree. Analysis
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4. RESULTS
This section will present the results from the data analysis. It will start with descriptive statistics and a correlational analysis of the dataset and then provide different models, each aiming at determining different parts of the hypotheses presented in the literature review.
Descriptive statistics
The first step in the analysis is to provide a basic description of the data. The table below outlines the means and standard deviations of the variables in use. Having a partner, having children and working parttime are not reported as they are coded as dummies.
TABLE 1
Descriptive Statistics unlimited and limited contract
Unlimited employment Limited employment
Mean SD Mean SD 1. Age 42.51 9.94 35.20 10.23 2. Wellbeing 7.78 1.18 7.80 1.40 3. Health 3.95 0.64 4.07 0.64 4. Level of education 3.83 1.66 3.88 1.74 5. Subjective income 3.45 0.67 3.25 0.71 6. Job security 2.89 0.96 2.55 1.05 7. Employability 4.89 2.63 5.38 2.65 N 1200 196
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Correlations
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TABLE 2 Correlations variables
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Hypothesis testing
The first hypothesis predicted that employees who have temporary contract experience a higher level of job insecurity compared to employees with a permanent contract. As already seen in table 2, there is a negative correlation between type of contract and job insecurity. To test hypothesis 1, regression analyses is conducted with job insecurity as dependent variable and type of contract as independent variable. Results show that people with a temporary contract experience more job insecurity (B= -.362, p < .001). So our hypotheses 1 is confirmed. We added our control variables of wellbeing in model 2. Subjective income and gender are the only two variables that have influence on wellbeing in addition to the type of contract.
TABLE 3
Regression of type of contract on job security
Model 1 Model 2 B SE B SE 2,887 .028 2.220 .235 Type contract -.342** .075 -.362** .077 Controls Gender .171* .061 Age -.006 .003 Health .055 .041 Subjective income .183** .040 Partner -.012 .061 Children Part-time .033 .007 .057 .066 Adj R² .014 .039 F 20,785 8,149 df 1395 1395 R²change .030
15 Hypothesis 2a says that employees who experience high level of job insecurity experience lower well-being than people with a low level of job insecurity. To test hypothesis 2a a regression analysis is performed with wellbeing as dependent variable, first the regression is conducted without the control variables (model 1), afterwards the regression is conducted including the control variables (model 2). For this hypothesis about wellbeing we control for age, sex, children living at home, health, subjective income and working part-time.
The results show a positive significant effect of job security on wellbeing (B = .126, p < .001). So hypothesis 2a is confirmed. In model 2 we can see that health, subjective income and having a partner have significant positive influence on wellbeing with even bigger effects on wellbeing than job security.
TABLE 3
Regression of job security on wellbeing
Model 1 Model 2 B SE B SE 7,231 .098 4.216 .270 Job security .193** .033 .126** .030 Controls Genders .093 .070 Age -.004 .003 Health .378** .047 Subjective income .432** .046 Partner .494** .070 Children Part-time -.040 .059 .065 .075 Adj R² .024 .189 F 34.810 41.753 df 1395 1395 R²change .170
16 Part b) of the second hypothesis says that employees with temporary contract experience lower wellbeing compared to employees with a permanent contract. As already seen in table 2, there is no significant correlation between type of contract and job insecurity. To test hypothesis 2b, regression analyses is conducted with wellbeing as dependent variable and type of contract as independent variable. People with a temporary contract experience no difference in wellbeing compared to people with a permanent contract (B =.081, p = n.s.) So hypotheses 2b is not confirmed.
TABLE 4
Regression of Type of contract on wellbeing
Model 1 Model 2 B SE B SE 7,775 .035 4.425 .269 Type of contract -.026 .093 .081 .088 Controls Gender .118 .070 Age -.004 .003 Health .381** .047 Subjective income .462** .046 Partner .493** .070 Children Part-time -.030 .050 .065 .076 Adj R² -.001 .180 F 0.078 39.240 df 1395 1395 R²change .185
**. Significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). *. Significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
17 p = n.s.). Entering the results of the two regressions into the Sobel test gives (z=3.365, p< .001). With a Sobel test is tested whether the mediator has an effect on the relationship between temporary contract and wellbeing that is different from 0. De Cuyper and De Witte (2005) found that job security can function as a moderator instead of a mediator. Additional moderator analyses is done. But from our analyses no significant moderator effect Job insecurity on wellbeing could be found (B= -.049, p = n.s.).
TABLE 5
Mediator effects of type of contract on wellbeing
Model 1 Model 2 B SE B SE 7,775 .035 4.134 .275 Type of contract .026 .093 .129 .088 Mediator Job security .131** .030 Controls Gender .096 .070 Age -.003 .003 Health .374** .047 Subjective income .438** .046 Partner .495** .070 Children -.034 .065 Part-time .049 .075 Adj R² -.001 .190 F .078 37.381 df 1395 1395 R²change .195
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TABLE 6
Moderator effects of Type of contract on wellbeing
Model 1 Model 2 B SE B SE 7,774 .032 4.507 .266 Type of contract .024 .033 .033 .031 Job security .195** .032 .131** .030 Moderator
Job security* Type of contract -.035 .030 -.049 .028 Controls Gender .096 .070 Age -.003 .003 Health .375** .047 Subjective income .439** .046 Partner .496** .070 Children -.032 .065 Part-time .046 .075 Adj R² .024 .197 F 12.385 34.001 df 1395 1395 R²change .171
**. Significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). *. Significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
19 employability reduces feelings of job insecurity (B=.047, p < .000). Hypothesis 4a is confirmed.
TABLE 7
Regression of Employability on job security
Model 1 Model 2 B SE B SE 2,574 .055 1.814 .236 Employability .054** .010 .047** .010 Controls Gender .172 .061 Age -.001 .003 Health .029 .042 Subjective income .185** .040 Partner .005 .062 Children Part-time .025 -.011 .058 .066 Adj R² .020 .039 F 29,677 4,963 df 1395 1395 R²change .024
**. Significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). *. Significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
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TABLE 8
Interaction of temporary contract and employability
Model 1 Model 2 B SE B SE 7,492 .069 4.297 .273 Type of contract -.002 .093 -.143 .192 Employability .058** .012 -.008 .038 Interaction
Type of contract & employability .041 .032 Controls Gender .108 .070 Age -.002 .003 Health .368** .047 Subjective income .447** .046 Partner .506** .070 Children -.048 .066 Part-time .064 .076 Adj R² .015 .186 F 11.269 32.920 df 1395 1395 R²change .176
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TABLE 9
Regression of Age and Education on employability
Model 1 Model 2
B SE B SE
4.849 .076 4.336 .621
Young & highly educated .807** .203 .128 .227 Controls Gender .205 .164 Age -.045** .008 Health .312 .111 Subjective income .349** .108 Partner -.332 .165 Children Part-time .553** -.226 .155 .177 Adj R² .011 .058 F 15.863 11.662 df 1395 1395 R²change .052
**. Significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). *. Significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
Hypotheses 6 says that young and highly educated people with a temporary contract have higher wellbeing than others on a temporary contract. No significant difference on wellbeing could be found between young and highly educated people and other people with temporary contracts
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TABLE 10
Regression of age, education and type of contract on wellbeing
Model 1 Model 2
B SE B SE
7,750 .037 4.462 .272
Type of contract .002 .094 .030 .100
Young & highly educated
.206 .094 -.353 .274
Interaction
Type of contract & young & highly educated .237 .208 Controls Gender .125 .070 Age -.005 .003 Health .385** .048 Subjective income .463** .046 Partner .497** .071 Children -.033 .076 Part-time .044 .076 Adj R² .002 .180 F 2.453 31.555 df 1395 1395 R²change .182
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Summary of hypotheses testing
To give an overview whether the hypotheses were confirmed or rejected, table 11 shows a summary.
TABLE 11
Summary of hypotheses testing
Hypothesis 1: People with a temporary contract experience more job
insecurity than people with a permanent contract.
Confirmed
Hypotheses 2a: Employees that experience high level of job insecurity
experience lower well-being than people with a low level of job insecurity.
Confirmed
Hypotheses 2b: Employees with temporary contract experiences lower
wellbeing than people with permanent contract.
Rejected
Hypothesis 3: Job insecurity mediates the effect of a temporary contract on
wellbeing.
Rejected
Hypotheses 4a: Employees with high perceived employability experience less
job insecurity than people with low perceived employability.
Confirmed
Hypotheses 4b: Employees with temporary contracts with high employability
have a higher wellbeing than employees with temporary contracts and low employability.
Rejected
Hypothesis 5: Young and highly educated people experience a higher level of
employability than other employees.
Rejected
Hypothesis 6: Young and highly educated people with a temporary contract
have higher wellbeing than other employees on a temporary contract.
Rejected
24 could not find any differences in wellbeing within the group of temporary employed people, which could be ascribed to employability. But what we did find is, that the link between employability and wellbeing was significant within the group of permanent employed people. Even if we try to further divide the group of temporary employed people we are not able to find differences in wellbeing. First we expected that young and highly educated people would experience a high level of employability than older and lower educated people, but we could not find that. And young and highly educated people with a temporary contract don’t differ in wellbeing compared to their older and lower educated counterparts.
5. DISCUSSION
While studies consistently found that unemployed people report a lower wellbeing than people with a job, mixed results were found for the effect of temporary contract on wellbeing. Therefore the main aim of this study was to examine whether people with temporary contracts experience lower wellbeing than people with permanent contracts. Our second aim was to identify which factors influence the negative effect of temporary employment on wellbeing.
The analysis shows that people with a temporary contract experienced more job insecurity than people with a permanent contract. It was also found that people with a high level of job insecurity report lower wellbeing than people with a low level of job insecurity. The logical consequence of these two findings would be that people with a temporary contract report lower wellbeing than people with a permanent contract, as they are higher in job insecurity than people with a permanent contract. However, we could not find this direct effect of temporary contract on wellbeing. People with a temporary contract did not report lower wellbeing than people with permanent contracts, even though the group of temporary employed people report a higher level of job insecurity. Consequently we could not find that job insecurity mediates the relationship between temporary contract and wellbeing. To test whether job insecurity would function as a moderator instead, as De Cuyper and De Witte (2005) found in their study, we did an additional analysis. But we did not find that job insecurity functions as a moderator either.
25 particularly temporary employed people experience, there are reasonable arguments that also permanent employed people can experience a high level of job. The last changes on the labour market showed that all kind of companies, independent whether they are successful or unsuccessful, can be taken over. Or in case they do not, at least face a need to decrease their workforce to stay competitive. These changes in the labour market could explain why we found an overall decrease in wellbeing by high job insecurity, but not when we excluded permanent employed people from the analysis.
Moreover, in our study we found that employees with a temporary contract do experience a higher level of job insecurity. Consequently, there has to be a different reason why temporary employed people do not experience a decrease in wellbeing according to our data, even though they score higher on job insecurity.
We elaborated above on the similarities between temporary employed people and permanently employed people, we continue with focusing on where people in temporary contracts differ from each other. One of the things we suggest employees differ on is employability. Employees with a high level of employability should not experience a high level of job insecurity as they perceive their changes for finding a new job relatively high. This hypothesis was supported by our data. Our results show that people who perceive themselves as highly employable report a lower level of job insecurity.
As a higher level of employability is associated with a high level of job security we wanted to know if high perceived employability leads to an increase in wellbeing among people with temporary contract compared to people with low employability in a temporary contract. But this hypothesis was not supported by our data. People with temporary contract and high employability do not report higher wellbeing than employees with temporary contracts and low employability. While we had no hypothesis about permanent employed people, we found a significant effect that people with a permanent contract and high employability have a higher wellbeing than people with a permanent contract and low employability. So our data shows that people with a permanent contract report higher wellbeing when they feel they are highly employable, but people with temporary contract do not.
26 Göransson, 1999), which should have an influence on the way people perceive their contract situation. Preference for doing a certain job in exchange for the security a permanent contract could offer, is highly related to the idea of boundaryless career where especially highly educated people take advantages of being highly employable, to create a career that fit their idea of personal development. Those young and highly educated people could also form part of the group that prefer a temporary contract over a permanent contract. For this group of people it might be true that people with a temporary contract have a high level of wellbeing. We tested two different relationships. First we tested whether young and highly educated people experience a higher level of employability. At first instance this was supported by our data, but after adding the control variables in the second model, significance dropped to the insignificant level, as employability is higher due to age, having a good income and not having children. Secondly we tested whether young and highly educated people with temporary contract experience a higher level of wellbeing than older or lower educated people with temporary contracts. Our results show that young and highly educated people do not experience higher wellbeing than older and low educated people with temporary contracts. Thus, young and highly educated people did not form a different group within temporary employed people.
In sum, most of our control variables were significant predictors of wellbeing. Especially being in good health, having a partner and having an income people can live comfortably on, has a significant influence on wellbeing. Having a partner could account for two positive influences. On the one hand a partner can give social support, as Lim (1996) found that support by family and/or friends moderate the negative effect of job insecurity on life satisfaction. On the other hand having a partner increases the total household income which can reduces stress about possible income loss.
Strengths, Limitations & Future Research Directions
The major strength of this research lies in its data sampling. Most research is done within one single research industry and with small sample sizes. By using the data of the ESS participants are randomly selected and a high number of participants is available. This is why findings of this research are representable and highly generalizable for the Netherlands. Despite that this research is highly generalizable for the Netherlands, the research findings may be different for other countries. In addition to a high number of participants a big
27 cross-sectional design of this study does not make it possible to conclude any causal
relationships. Thus, results should be read with the awareness that, even though we are able to give theoretical explanation for the effects we found, reverses cause-relationships are possible as well. A second limitation in our study is the amount of time available for this research. With the amount and the variety of variables in the ESS more elaborate research could have been done which would help to answer more question this topic includes.
Several recommendations for further research can be made. Krausz (2000) found that those who preferred temporary employment over permanent employment showed a higher level of wellbeing and lower level of stress than those who were looking for permanent employment while having a permanent contract. Guest (2004) reported that being in the contract of choice is positively related to perceived job security. The question whether people are in their contract of choice is unfortunately not asked in the ESS, therefore we could not control for this aspect of temporary employment.
Further research should take into account whether people choose for temporary employment. As job insecurity has a tremendous short and long term effect on those who experience it, more attention should be directed towards decreasing the permanent stressful factor in employees lives (Sverke & Hellgren, 2002). Several research is already been done (for an overview see Sverke & Hellgreen, 2002) but future research should take a closer look at how negative influence of job insecurity can be buffered by different variables. We found that employability has a positive effect on perceived job security for at least a part of the employees. Therefore, employability of temporary and permanent employed people could be a further research direction.
Practical Implications
28 clear if the law will contribute to this aim. Employers should have an interest in the decrease of the perceived job insecurity of their employees, as employees with a high wellbeing are more engaged and more productive (Van der Meer & Wielers, 2013). Another recommendation for employers is investing in the employability of their workers, while, even though further research is recommended, employability seems a viable factor to prevent a high level of job insecurity. This recommendation is true for employees as well, investing in own skill development can secure someone’s position in the labour market.
6. Conclusion
This study may further the debate on temporary employment. Temporary workers were found to experience more job insecurity as compared to permanents. Still, job insecurity did not result in lower wellbeing. Motives why people are temporary employed might vary, and whether they are at the contract of choice should be taken into account in further research. Although people with permanent contract were found to report less job insecurity as compared with permanent contract people, job insecurity led to a decrease in wellbeing for both groups of employees. When it comes to connecting our finding on job insecurity and employability to type of contract, our study failed to show significant results. In conclusion, it seems that having a temporary contract does not have much influence on people at least as long as they are having a partner and income security. With a great amount of research showing the negative consequences of job insecurity on various aspects of life satisfaction and job satisfaction, further research should focus on which factors can reduce negative effects of job insecurity on wellbeing.
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