Workers’ Satisfaction vis-à-vis Environmental and Socio-Morphological Aspects for Sustainability and Decent Work

Abeer Elshater,Hisham Abusaada,Sandy Grant,Abdulmoneim Alfiky,Esraa Elmarakby,Nardine El-Bardisy

doi:10.3390/su14031699

Abeer Elshater, Hisham Abusaada + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su14031699

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Abstract

This study examines worker satisfaction vis-à-vis outdoor places in terms of their environmental and socio-morphological aspects. Numerous studies have considered decent work as the eighth goal of sustainable development. However, it is worth investigating outdoor workers’ satisfaction with a view to the practical design of the surrounding context that supports their work in outdoor places. Using bibliometric analysis, this study investigates possible approaches toward providing decent work in a public place in Cairo as a case study, focusing on outdoor workers’ satisfaction. In the bibliometric analysis, this study used query settings in the Scimago database to search for manuscripts published in the previous five years. The result yielded 195 manuscripts that were filtered down to 50 manuscripts and then grouped using VOSviewr Software. Environmental noise and heat assessment analyses were performed using noise level measurements, remote sensing, and the Grasshopper platform. Further, we conducted an ethnographic study employing 77 participant observations. The results show that work hours and time affect worker satisfaction, as do environmental conditions, particularly noise and heat. However, unexpected findings from participant observation in this study do not accord with findings in other scholarly sources, where other observers find workers neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with the spatial morphology in the case study. Per this study, the alignment of worker satisfaction with convenient socio-morphological tangible elements of the workplace and with other environmental aspects should be attained in both specified replicable methods to engender decent work for outdoor workers.

Highlights

Worker satisfaction and worker physical and mental well-being when working outdoors have led to an uptick in research interest in urban design and the provision of decent work
The first set of questions assisted the authors in determining the sample size and developing arguments based on their observations of the case study’s outdoor workers
The literature review using bibliometric analysis provided some perspectives on the various factors that can affect decent work, such as the environment, design, and management trinity

Summary

Introduction

Worker satisfaction and worker physical and mental well-being when working outdoors have led to an uptick in research interest in urban design and the provision of decent work. Environmental stresses, such as sound and heat, have been widely studied in the urban planning and design literature [1,2,3]. A bibliometric search of related work was performed from late 2020 to late 2021 to identify the literature on decent work in urban studies and relevant areas of knowledge and worker satisfaction. The first phase was a random search using keywords (i.e., urban heat islands (UHI), noise, workplace, decent work, and worker satisfaction).

Results

Discussion

Conclusion