Introduction
An organization’s labor force is a significant contributing factor to its success. The human resource department has gained a considerable number of research from labor economists and academics. For employees to be an effective input in an organization, they need to be in their most productive state of physical and mental health. The employees’ immediate needs at work, such as a conducive working environment and availability of necessary resources, are crucial and thus should be prioritized by the management. In addition, psychological needs such as individual needs, self-esteem, affection, and safety are critical to employees’ performance. This paper criticizes an article by Salehi et al. (2020), “The impact of personal characteristics, quality of working life, and psychological well-being on job burnout among Iranian external auditors.” Organizations should strive to establish the causes and find solutions for work-related stress and job burnout to create a strong labor force.
Job burnout and work-related stress affect an employee’s mental and physical health. They led to job dissatisfaction, which resulted in poor productivity, absenteeism, and numerous professional mistakes. Taking these consequences into consideration, Salehi et al. (2020) focused on establishing the connection between personal characteristics, the quality of working life, and auditors’ psychological well-being and job burnout. The authors sample 240 auditors working in the manager, senior, partner, and junior levels in 53 public accounting and auditing firms in Mashhad. Salehi et al. (2020) found a positive correlation between the sample’s characteristics, the quality of working life, and auditors’ psychological well-being and job burnout. However, this paper argues that in addition to the above factors, the practice of management is also a crucial factor in the success of an organization’s labor force.
Management is an essential skill to a human living in one way or another as they strive to achieve the desired goal that they target. It is an important virtue as it involves organizing and allocating apportioning resources in a certain manner to maximize the utility of such resources. Management is believed to have existed as early as human civilization, basically, since the beginning of organized human activity during the evolution of human beings. Although, the study of management scientifically and systematically as an independent field of study was only recent origin when humans started to document their activity for the mastery of a concept or content. Management is the art of creating a conducive environment where people can work together and perform toward the achievement of a desired set goal. Managers constantly keep the organization focused on ensuring that activities are done perfectly and the employee have the right perception and energy toward meeting the goal.
Quality of Work Life
Quality of work life (QWL) is relatively significant to the quality of life (QOL) of an employee. According to Salehi et al. (2020), quality of working life can be described in terms of fair payment, safe working environment, work ethics, social composition, and a healthy environment that develops employees’ skills and talents. Employees experiencing a quality work-life have a high level of job satisfaction. The authors continue to insinuate that the quality of work-life is determined by the remuneration, promotion, and motivation activities in an organization. Quality of work life can also be linked to the ability of employees to experience the quality of life outside the organization. For instance, some employees aim at attaining higher education, leading a particular level of life, and other personal achievements. If employees are not able to attain these objectives, they may lack meaning in their jobs due to psychological stress.
In their article, Salehi et al. lack an appreciation of appreciating the role of quality management skills in the development of a quality working life. Since people have different levels of intelligence, knowledge, skills, physical condition, and attitude, managers should aim to motivate the personnel within the organization so that to become more resourceful in the conducting of operations. Managers must understand how to create a quality working life environment as it involves the sociological and psychological fulfillment of the people within the organization. Good management contributes to the quality of work-life through improved interpersonal, technical, and conceptualization skills.
Personal Traits
Personal characteristics affect a person’s ability to form a good judgment in their work. In this specific article, Salehi et al. (2020) note that the auditors are required by their professional body to be of sound physical and mental health when undertaking a task so they will potentially provide a quality service in accordance with their knowledge and skills. In this regard, work-related stress significantly affects the auditing profession. Salehi et al. (2020) establish work burnout as a stressor that may impact the auditors’ judgment.
They argue that work burnout is derived from a high workload which leads to auditors losing the proper concentration required to fulfill their tasks. They also recognize personal characteristics as having an important role in the occurrence of job burnout. For example, they argue that a type A personality is likely to elevate the connection of work overload to work burnout. Other personal characteristics featured in the article include education level, work experience, marital status, and gender affects the level of work burnout.
However, this article does not recognize personal conceptual, decision-making, and technical skills as contributors to quality work life. The ability of a person to visualize the entire concept for abstract thinking and to formulate possible ideas that can be implemented in fixing the diagnosed problem. The conceptual skill also involves the capability of facing complicated scenarios and developing a creative solution during a crisis or an unconditional environment. Individuals working in a highly engaging environment such as an auditing firm need to have a very conceptual mind that is innovative and creative. Every employee must possess the ability to face the situation with a highly valuable abstract that could work toward achieving the organization’s objective.
Decision-making skills are the ability to find a solution quickly and an effective solution to a particular problem. Employees must have the ability to analyze the situation and provide potential alternatives that can be implemented when solving the problem. In decision-making, the worker has to view the problem from different perspectives to choose the best solution to implement from a list of available alternatives. Also, decision-making requires the employee to prevent the occurrence of a problem that might hinder the smooth operation of the organization by visualizing a hypothetical scenario.
Technical skills are the ability of a person to use knowledge and techniques to achieve the desired objective. It involves the skill of coordinating things in the organization, which entails, what is needed to be done, where, when, and how it will be done. They give the employee insight into the knowledge of the activity in the organization and the ability to use different techniques to achieve the organization’s goal. These skills are not related to any professional lifelike operating machines, production tools, and any piece of equipment but are the technical skills required in coordinating the organization’s activity. As an auditor, to succeed, a full understanding of the organization’s objective and what every individual in the organization does to achieve the mission and the vision.
Conclusion
To sum it up, employees are the most valuable asset in an organization. In this regard, organizations need to take care of their employees to produce maximum productivity. However, work burnout and work-related stress lower employees’ productivity, lead to absenteeism, and numerous professional mistakes. To address this issue, Salehi et al. (2020) studied personal characteristics, psychological needs, and quality of work-life about work burnout among auditors in Iran. They established the quality of work-life to be concerning fair payment, social integration, and work ethics. They fail to establish the role of good management skills in the development of quality work life. In addition, personal characteristics affect a person’s ability to deliver quality judgment. They argue that a sound physical and mental state is essential in delivering quality work.
The authors do not recognize the role of conceptual, decision-making, and technical skills as personal characteristics that can lead to work burnout. The conceptual skill involves the ability to face complicated scenarios and develop a creative solution during a crisis or an unconditional environment. Employees must have the ability to analyze the situation and provide potential alternatives that can be implemented when solving the problem. In addition, technical skills are the ability of a person to use knowledge and techniques to achieve the desired objective.
References
Salehi, M., Seyyed, F., & Farhangdoust, S. (2020). The impact of personal characteristics, quality of working life and psychological well-being on job burnout among Iranian external auditors. International Journal of Organization Theory & Behavior. Web.