SELF-EMPLOYMENT AND WORKPLACE WELLBEING
Research Context
The self-employed are commonly defined as the ‘individuals who earn no wage or salary
but who derive their income by exercising their profession or business on their account
and at their own risk.’(Parker,2004 ：6). The analysis of the impact of self-employment
usually takes into account the impacts on macro- (society level) and microeconomic scale
(individual level). At the society level, this group of people has been considered to be a
significant economic force and plays a significant part in the current labour market of the
record-low unemployment rate. This is because they help to remain individuals attached
to the labour market who might otherwise exit, they acquire human capital which
enhances their future labour market chances, and they present a ‘signal’ of positive
characteristics toward future employers (Felstead, Gallie and Green, 2015). Particularly,
in the UK, self-employment is on the rise. It now is a large and growing part of the UK
labour force. Five million people—15% of the workforce—are now self-employed, which
account for more than 1 in 7 workers in the UK(House of Work and Pensions
Committee,2017). Also, since the 2008 financial crisis, shifts to self-employment have
helped drive a recovery in employment, which has risen from 70.1 percent of covering
unemployment in the third quarter of 2011 to a record high of 74.2 percent in the first
quarter of 2016(House of Work and Pensions Committee,2017). The performance of
those who are self-employed has been acknowledged by the Office of National Statistics
(ONS), who stated that trends in this
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area are one of the ‘defining characteristics’ of the UK's economic recovery (Office
for National Statistics,2015).
At the individual level, studies on the impact of self-employment primarily focus on the
financial performance of the individual self-employed, for example, the growth rate of
their companies, the size of recruitment, profits and customers. However, these indicators
fall short of capturing many aspects of the sound flourishing work and living conditions.
On the other hand, another trend has emerged in the UK. The workplace wellbeing has
been emphasised as a significant policy agenda in the UK and other EU countries. This is
because wellbeing is not only an important individual phenomenon, but also is a critical
indication of socio-economic progress and constitutes a vital social resource (Uly, Foo
and Song, 2013). Nonetheless, negative workplace wellbeing consumes massive social
resources and incurs financial cost (Felstead, Gallie, and Green, 2015). As a matter of
fact, the overall situation of workplace wellbeing in the UK and EU countries is not as
positive as people have expected. For example, in the UK, a great number of British
workers, above 15 million populations, actually are dissatisfied with their jobs (Wales and
Amankwah, 2016). In the EU countries, 47% individuals indicated that they have at least
more than two health issues, which show ‘ a strong connection between the physical and
mental dimensions’. Moreover, the EU-OSHA survey found that around half of workers
in the EU countries have said that they commonly had work-related stress while working
(EU-OSHA, 2013). Therefore, the workplace wellbeing has become a significant issue in
the national policy agenda.
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For example, the Europe 2020 Strategy for Growth, Competitiveness and Sustainable
Development Report emphasised that health and wellbeing are the fundamental elements,
as it stated ‘Policies on health and wellbeing are considered of primary importance to the
European Union and individual member states’ (Eurofound, 2015 ：5 ). In the UK, the
government issued the Dame Carol Black Review of the Health of Britain’s working age
population-’working for a Healthier Tomorrow’. Among other things, this review has
suggested that ‘workplaces should go beyond compliance with health and safety and other
relevant employment law, and extend their agenda to promoting employee health and
wellbeing’ (Carol,2008:53), which emphasised the increasing focus on both depression
and work-related stress in the UK.
Consequently, as the two issues noted above, on the one hand, the boom of self-employment
implies that self-employment should no longer be regarded as a fringe activity but instead to
a mainstream form of work that merits more attention from researchers, which calls for more
studies to go with the grain of this potentially enduring trend. On the other hand, the
workplace wellbeing of the labour force, as one of the most significant policy issue in the
UK, should not exclude self-employment into consideration. By combining these two
significant facts in the UK, interesting questiones are posted in this thesis, ‘if wellbeing is
such a grave concern in the workplace, what about the workplace wellbeing of self-employed
people? What is the impact of self-employment on workplace wellbeing at the individual
level?’ Moreover, a good understanding in the incidence of self-employment at the micro
level can extend the in-depth and personal knowledge that is easily ignored in macro level
studies and enhance our understanding of the impact of self-employment at the macro
level.
From an academic perspective, the research interest in workplace wellbeing emerged quite
late, and many of significant themes studied within the psychological area on wellbeing have
not yet to make their way into the self-employment research (Diener et al., 2002; Keyes,
2002). This is an important inquiry in current academic field. Firstly, workplace wellbeing
has been shown to serve as a strong predictor of such behaviours as workers’ commitment,
motivation, absenteeism, quitting intentions, and other affective responses to aspects of the
job or the employer which closely relate to the organisation’s performance or business
success (Gazioglu and Tans el, 2006;Lange 2012). Secondly, with regard to motivation
studies, an increasing emphasis on current research focuses on the determinants of pursuing
self-employment (Dolinsky and Caputo, 2003). When one plans to be one of the self-
employed, he/she always considering the rewards of his/her self-employment. In the past,
self-employment reward has almost exclusively been defined as financial outcomes. While
such measurements are indeed important indicators of success, however, currently growing
recognition in the field of the self-employment research indicates that a somewhat broader
definition of ‘the self-employment reward’—one that including wellbeing is as important as
financial outcomes. Indeed, research findings indicate that many individuals, who are driven
to be the self-employed with more non-monetary intentions and are more caring about the
influence of self-employment on their wellbeing (Baron and Torero 2012; Cassar, 2007).
Many researches, however, have mainly focused on the positive factors that attract people
to be the self-employed and focus less on the consequences or outcomes of being the self-
employed. However, the picture is complex, and the impact of entrepreneurs varies
according to the length of time over which outcomes are measured (Baumberg and
Meager, 2015). Therefore, understanding the self-employment process and its
relationship with workplace wellbeing can provide new and valuable insights. As
Shepherd (2015) suggests, one of the most promising avenues for future entrepreneurship
research will be where ‘the head engages the heart.’
Moreover, this thesis will conduct a comparative analysis to examine the differences
between the self-employed and employees on the issue of workplace wellbeing.
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