What does good work mean for you?

Good work is to me fulfilling work. This means a degree of enablement. Realistically the degree of this must vary for different levels of job but everyone must feel that their own views are welcome and no-one must be simply told - shut up and get on with it as you are told. As to scale and methods of reward I would just say 1. Anyone working full time must be paid at minimum enough to bring up a family. 2. In this flexible world zero hours contracts should be available but only if the employee clearly wants this.

Good work is inevitably going to be different things to different people and its definition is likely to change throughout the course of a working life.  For most, good work is likely to mean secure paid employment (but not necessarily so) which allows the individual to provide for themselves and their family. A bit old fashioned really.  But good work could offer fulfulment too - a job well-done and a contribution well-made that is rightly recognised by peers and community alike.  The concept should work for businesses and organisations as well.  Good work ought to engender commitment and loyalty through the shared enterprise in which the benefits are seen and understood to be fairly distributed and a common purpose achieved.  Good work should be good for the individual and for the whole of society.  In a nutshell, I think good work is rewarding, fulfilling, secure, flexible when it can be, safe and personal.  To achieve some of this then we need to change the race to the bottom, cut-throat competition, the cheapest contract, low prices, low wages, sharp employment practice etc.  Maybe businesses and organisations who provide 'good work' could be recognised and rewarded although this begins to sound like the old 'Investors in People' scheme.  As much as there could be qudos for 'good work' employers I suspect the big stick of legislation may be required. 

As so often with the RSA, unfortunately, there is an assumption behind this question which is in the long line of questionable philosophical notions from Kant onwards about the autonomy of the person.  The question is focussed on rights without responsibilities (as Baldwin put it regarding the press "the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages").  The first definition of good work has to be that everyone involved (I deliberately avoid that overused and ill-defined word "stakeholder") is satisfied that it IS good work - and the most important of those is the employer: the person who has to give the reward for the performance by the individual.  Of course, the individual should be able to walk away without penalty, unless he/she has undermined the organisation through underperformance, fraud or other misdemeanour.  But to imagine that the employer's decision that the work is "good" is somehow subordinate or equal to all these other "goods" Matthew mentions is to ignore reality.  Before anyone cries foul, note that I, as chair of a small charity, employ someone who had a brain aneurism and is extremely lucky to be alive - in her recovery over the past year, we paid her full salary for six months until she could return for first two half-days and then three.  With her agreement she now works three "three-quarter" days and we have only now adjusted her salary accordingly, with her agreement.  We do this partly out of altruism, but more importantly because she is dedicated, knowledgeable, efficient, cheerful and selfless.  For almost a year I and other volunteers filled the gap (not very well but adequately).  Had she NOT produced "good work" from her employer's perspective, the outcome would have been very different (in full agreement with employment law).

The UK needs to adequately reward and respect all workers who support our society particularly carers and educators. Anyone working full time deserves to be able to feed and house themselves without depending on welfare. Technology and globalisation can, and should be, adapted to benefit and raise the living standards and opportunities of all and not just the few.

Good work could be defined under three broad headings, or componentsThe first two require the full support, commitment and understanding of and by management and/or corporate executives. The third is more difficult to quantify and measure, and may not  be possible in all work environments other than that if the first is met, then the individual worker may well relate more positively to society. The inherent difficulties in achieving good work should be obvious - and are not helped by a society that has become increasingly selfish and self-centred following the late Margaret Thatcher's dictat that there is no such thing as society, only the individual...