LabCom QVTi

The demographic, economic and cultural changes observed in contemporary western societies, combined with profound changes in the professional world, have made the quality of life at work a major policy issue for work organisations. Indeed, in a world characterised by all kinds of uncertainty, complexity and disruptions, attracting and retaining high quality staff constitutes a significant competitive advantage. The quality of life at work meets this ambition, because it indicates and includes actions that bridge the gap between improving employees’ work conditions and the firm’s overall performance (ANI, 2013). While there is clear evidence of the growing number of scientific studies identifying the actions required to achieve this objective (e.g. quality of work relationships, reconciling private and professional life), they have a number of limitations. These include notably: (1) analyses that are segmented and thus out of touch with the complexity of the current professional context, (2) their non-integrative theoretical approaches, as they are produced by disciplines that do not link their respective contributions, (3) they do not take into account the regulatory framework of quality of life at work, (4) the actions described frequently refer to the managerial rather than the organisational level, thereby attributing less responsibility to the company for implementing measures fostering the employees’ quality of life. Moreover, in the professional sphere, improving the quality of life at work is dependent on ad hoc projects, which do not form part of the organisation’s policy and whose assessment is most often based exclusively on diagnoses that do not include the subjective perceptions of the workers. Developing innovative research on the organisational levers of quality of life at work overcoming these limitations, while also proposing groundbreaking counselling and support practices in this field, represents a major challenge for scientists and professionals. This is the aim of LabCom, which brings together the QualiPsy research unit (Tours University), comprising occupational psychologists and clinical psychologists specialising in the psychological health of workers and quality of life at work, and AD Conseil, a company specialising in innovative solutions for occupational health, quality of life at work, and management. More precisely, the aim of LabCom is to develop the first integrated system of sustainable management of quality of life at work (QVTi), based on the following principles: 1) that the development, maintenance and improvement of quality of life at work should be based on the implementation, assessment and optimisation of virtuous organisational practices. 2) that the quality of life at work should be considered with a view to continuous improvement. 3) that maintaining and improving quality of life at work should come under the responsibility of in-house management. The aim is thus to develop an appropriate QVTi, in other words, one that is firmly grounded in the specific nature of each work organisation, and in which the employees are involved in order to ensure that it is managed sustainably and efficiently.