Employers should be ensuring that IT contractors benefit from "good work" which promotes physical and mental wellbeing, a leading trade union has claimed.

With around a third of people's waking hours spent at work, a person's career helps to define who they are, as well as where and how long they live, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) claims.

In a new pamphlet the TUC notes that there is a danger that employers and workers alike see work as simply an economic process.

A culture of "good work" promotes well-being, through factors such as a friendly and flexible workplace, development opportunities and control over workload, according to the TUC.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said that the implementation of a national good work culture could have huge economic rewards, with tens of billions of pounds lost each year through employee sickness.

"But as long as we see good work as an idea rather than a basic human right, work will continue to make workers ill and as a result employees and society will continue to suffer," Mr Barber added.

In January, the TUC announced that UK workers gave away £27 billion in un-paid overtime in 2009.