Young Workers’ from the Industrial Enterprises Social Well-Being: Indicators and Factors

Abstract

Vladislav Bocharov – Kandidat nauk (PhD) in Sociology, Associate Professor, the Chairman of Sociology and Cultural Studies at Sociological department, Samara National Research, associate research fellow of The Sociological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation. Email: vlad.bocharov@gmail.com

Julia Vaskina – Kandidat nauk (PhD) in Sociology, Associate Professor, the Chairman of Sociology and Cultural Studies at Sociological department, Samara National Research University, associate research fellow of The Sociological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation. Email: vaskina18.05@gmail.com

In this article we examine the specific features behind social well-being indicators, which have been previously outlined by European and Russian researchers. Based on a comparison of the concepts of 'social well-being' and 'subjective well-being', this article highlights two common indicators for future domestic and foreign studies: satisfaction with life in general and confidence in the future. The main purpose of this study was to find out what factors impact on the social well-being of young workers. The obvious value of such knowledge is the adjustment of the social policy directions in the workplace to match young workers expectations of social well-being. What makes such social policy adjustments relevant and important is their effectiveness in reducing the outflow of personnel that has been observable in Russian industrial enterprises over a long period. This article deals with the impact of two groups of factors on social well-being: manufacturing (working conditions, wages, etc.) and non-manufacturing (housing). The importance of these factors is confirmed with the correlated analysis of mass surveys data from young (under 30 years) workers of Russian industrial enterprises. This analysis employed data from sociological research carried out during monitoring (based on a unified methodology) of the Russian district of the Volga region in 2012–2014.With the help of the SPSS programme we collected the data from young workers (2012 N=242, 2013 N=168) to build general patterns of industrial workers’ responses (for 2012–2013). We also took survey data from 2014 on 'young specialists' (N=122). In 2014, an additional criterion for selecting respondents (besides age-related) was the requirement for workers to have secondary or higher professional education. This education must correspond to their future specialization or profession in industry. This is why these workers were called 'young specialists' in our research. The revealed correlations between the social well-being of workers and a variety of factors can assist management in organizing the right social policy in the Russian industrial enterprises. In general, this article highlights the need for a flexible approach to selecting social well-being indicators for different social groups.