Engagement in a Service Organisation

Abstract The interest in engagement as a concept has increased rapidly over the last decades, due to the fact that it has a positive effect on overall performance. The numbers of publications are increasing but the high popularity of engagement among businesses is not coherent with the lack of existing publications on engagement. This aroused my interest in the topic. With the standpoint in hermeneutics I set out to investigate the concept. I do so by applying a qualitative research method by conducting a case study of a local café: Madkompagniet. My overall research problem is: how does engagement occur and which factors influences work engagement in a service organisation. Cecilie Brock Jensen Cj90834 BscB AU BSS Maj 2013

Preliminary to my analysis I have made a literature review to comprehend the existing material on the topic. I can only know what is new and interesting if I know what is already uncovered about the concept. I chose the definition of engagement made by Schaufeli, he defines engagement as a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is categorized by vigor, dedication and absorption. Furthermore I elaborate on the frameworks of Engagement culture and Social Exchange Theory. I chose to elaborate on more than one framework to get a more holistic picture of engagement. When researching human behaviour one has to take into consideration that people are individuals and perceive things differently. This is another reason to why I have chosen a qualitative approach: to get a more holistic picture of the case. This constitutes my method of choice and the framework for my analysis.

The purpose of my analysis is to investigate how engagement occurs and, which antecedents are present within the organisation of Madkompagniet. To investigate this I conduct six in- debt interviews with employees of Madkompagniet. When I have collected this empirical data I analyse it by coding it to find common patterns and themes. Through the coding process I uncover the most frequently mentioned themes. The themes that are emphasised by the employees are: satisfaction, energy, responsibility, good social environment, open communication, and the perception of time flying by quickly. These relates to the definition of engagement and the antecedents for engagement. To further elaborate on the themes uncovered by coding I conduct a within-case analysis where I relate the empirical data to the existing theory to find accordance with the theory and to find deficiencies between theory and the case. I find that my case is an individual case of engagement within a service organisation. The employees of Madkompagniet indicate that they are engaged. However it is misleading in a qualitative paper to conclude if the employees are engaged and to what degree the employees are engaged. What I do state is, which antecedents are present within the organisation. My research indicates that Madkompagniet have a trusting, fair and safe culture that foster engagement. Furthermore Madkompagniet also have matches on the six areas of worklife and the work settings within the company this also imply engagement. The antecedents within the framework of work demand are also present. The only issue that I uncovered was the lack of job resources. However the employees did not express that it is an issue to them. What they did emphasize was the dominating influence that the social aspect of the job has on

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engagement. In this case it is the most dominating theme. The antecedents that are present from the different frameworks all relate to the social aspect of the work place but no framework emphasizes it to the extent that it is important in my paper. I discuss this along with the fact that human behaviour and individualism are two very influential factors for my research.

My findings are summarized in the last conclusive section where I state that one element is enough to influence engagement. The theoretical frameworks indicate that more antecedents has to be present to foster engagement but my research shows that if one is dominating enough it can overshadow the other antecedents and issues to the extent where they become less important for engagement.

Indholdsfortegnelse

1. Introduction What is engagement and how does it occur? In recent years the interest in this topic has increased because many believe engagement can predict employee outcomes, organisational success and financial performance. However the field of research is young and employee

engagement has rarely been studied in academic literature (Saks 2006). However research on work engagement is increasing. Engagement has become very popular in business and consultancy firms because of the far-reaching positive implications engagement has for employees’ performance. This popularity of engagement among businesses is not coherent with the lack of publications on engagement but the scholars are now becoming aware of the importance of engagement. Thu, the number of publications is increasing: scholars are testing and researching the concept of work engagement (Bakker & Leiter 2012). Engaged employees are important. They are significantly important in service firms. Frontline jobs are both complex and demanding and very critical for the firm. The frontline employees deliver the value proposition to the customers, they are the ‘face’ of the organisation in the customers’ eyes and they are a part of building and market the brand of the organisation (Slåtten & Mehmetoglu 2011). According to Gail (2012) Engaged employees are productive and have a high level of energy. Engaged employees go above and beyond what are expected of them. Quantitative studies have shown that engagement is positively related to work performance (Gail 2012).

The concept of work engagement has been approach through a numerous of ways and define by many. Engagement in this paper is defined as:

“…a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is categorized by vigor, dedication and absorption (Schaufeli et al. 2002)

This definition will be further elaborated on in section 4 about the theoretical background for my paper. What is evident is that the focus on engagement in al types of organisations has increased significantly over recent years. The firms have realized the importance of having engaged employees. Burnout theory, engagement theory, Kahn’s 1990 model and more has all been used to research the field of engagement (Saks 2006). They all state that employee engagement is a significant factor within organisations (Bakker & Leiter 2012; Gail 2012; Kahn 1990). One study by Bakker et al. (2004) indicates that engaged employees perform better and they are willing to go the extra mile for the job (Bakker & Demerouti, 2008). In this paper I want to look at the basis for achieving job engagement in a service organisation because the above-mentioned benefits are especially important in businesses, where people

provide quality service. Studies have shown that social support from colleagues and supervisors, performance feedback, skill variety and learning opportunities are positively associated with work engagement. These founding recur in several studies on ways to motivate and engage employees (McKinsey Quaterly 2009; Bakker & Demerouti, 2008). My motivation for this paper is that ‘human capital’ has become a prominent term in business (Risher & Howard 2010) and that there has been an increase in the interest in the concept of employee engagement related to work performance and competitive advantage (Slåtten & Mehmetoglu 2011).

The case, which I am going to build my data collection and analysis on, is the firm Madkompagniet. I have chosen Madkompagniet, a local café because they are a service company that I have easy access to and because they focuses on high customer service. The frontline employees at Madkompagniet perform well and the performance-level financially has increased over the years (årsreport Madkompagniet). However they are still a young company who have worked out routines and processes along with the activity level, the surroundings and the staff on the working place. This approach has worked out so far, even though the employees have not received significant monetary rewards for their effort on the workplace and even though Madkompagniet have no specific focus on engaging their employees. I want to investigate if and how a small local company who has no focus and does nothing specific whatsoever to motivate and engage employees can have engaged employees and which elements that influences engagement in a service company. I want to discover the antecedents for engagement in this case.

Therefore I want to investigate the level of engagement among the employees at Madkompagniet and the factors influencing engagement. The purpose of this paper is to reveal the reasons for engagement in theory and at Madkompagniet and look at deficiencies between the theory and the case. Furthermore the paper will finish by applying theory to discuss the case and look at the deficiencies between the theory and the case.

2. Problem statement In accordance with the above introduction, the purpose of this paper is to attain knowledge through the exiting literature and studies already conducted about engagement, and apply it

to the case study of Madkompagniet. Madkompagniet has not had any focus on engagement, however the research indicates that it is important for service companies to have engaged employees to perform well and provide high level of service (Slåtten & Mehmetoglu 2011). Therefore I find it interesting to make a case study on Madkompagniet. My overall field of research is engagement in a service organisation. To uncover this field of research the overall research questions of this paper are:

How does engagement occur and which factors influences work engagement in a service organisation?

To specify this research question I seek to answer these questions: How does engagement occur? What are the antecedents for engagement? Why does the antecedents influence engagement? To further apply the field of research to the case study I find it necessary to add the questions: Which factors influence the employee’s level of engagement at Madkompagniet? Which factors are more or less important for the engagement of the employees of Madkompagniet? Why does these factors influence engagement?

3. Structure For structuring my paper I have chosen a linear structure, which starts with an outline of the problem formulation and research questions, then reviews the literature and describes the theoretical framework, proceeds to the methodology section and analysis and ends by presenting the findings and conclusions and a discussion with regard to the theory. Only by knowing what other researchers have said about engagement can I know what is interesting and new, therefore I have chosen to place my theoretical framework early in my paper. I am going to use these sections by constantly intertwine prior research, empirical findings and theoretical ideas into my research.

I have started this paper by introducing the topic: engagement, and explained my motivation for writing this paper. Preliminary to the analysis I have conducted a literary review of already existing material. Chapter 4 about the theoretical framework starts by conceptualizing engagement. Many have described engagement before; therefore I have tried to describe some of the approaches that different scholars have used. After that I have

specified which factors and antecedents I have chosen as the background for my analysis of engagement in section 4.2: Engagement culture. I am going to use this in my analysis of the empirical data. Sections 4.1 and 4.1 explain what engagement is and, which antecedents are necessary to have engagment, but not how it works. Therefore I have included section 4.3 about Social Exchange Theory, because this describes why the antecedents cause engagement. This is important for the ‘why’ part of my research problem. After that I have described two questionnaires that I am using to develop my interview guide (described in section 5.4 Development of the interview guide).

After the theoretical framework I have placed my section on methodology to provide the reader with the reasoning and argumentation for the chosen method and framework of this paper, before going in to my analysis of the empirical data. The analysis consist of a case

record that describes the case in general and through coding separates the most important themes from the data. To further elaborate on these themes I will conduct a with-in case analysis where I search for patterns and similarities and then relate them to the existing theory. The paper ends by discussing the findings with regard to the theory and presenting the conclusions made from the analysis and the discussion of the findings, in regard to the theory. The first part of my paper is done in a deductive approach the last is done in an inductive approach. This mixture is called abduction and the whole methodology will be elaborated on in section 5. The structure of my paper, visually look like the figure 1. Structure of the paper displayed above.

4. Theoretical framework

4.1 Conceptualizing engagement Preliminary to this chapter about the theoretical framework I will try to conceptualize engagement to give the reader a clear picture of the concept that this paper is concerned with. This section: 4.1 conceptualizing engagement, is meant as an overview of the concept and a quick run through of some of the theories that addresses engagement.

Many have conceptualized engagement: consultancy firms, scholars and businesses, however I am going to base my theory on scholarly sources only. These different conceptualizations are important to look at because they use very different approaches to assess engagement. To present the reader with some of the different conceptualizations I provided this section. Later on I specify which element of this section I will use. I do this to give an overview of the concept engagement and then later on narrow it down to the essence that I will use for the purpose of this paper.

In academics the concept of Engagement academics has been conceptualized and defined in many ways even though the field of research is fairly new. Almost all scientific articles about engagement appeared during the 1990’s and later but because the popularity of the concept is significant and increasing, academic scholars have begun to study and define work engagement more frequently. This chapter provides an overview of various concepts of work engagement. The first to conceptualize engagement was Kahn in 1990 (Bakker & Leiter 2010). Kahn describes engagement as:

“ Harnessing of organisational members’ selves to their work roles: in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, emotionally and mentally during role performances”

Kahn’s 1990 conceptualization of engagement is role related, he reflects on the role that an individual plays within a particular organization; it can be a work role or a role as another member of the organisation. Kahn also found that three psychological conditions are associated with engagement: meaningfulness, safety and availability (Kahn 1990). In his theory he explains that employees put a lot of effort into their job in situations they find meaningful. The employees also have to feel safe and be psychologically available (Saks 2006). Kahn believes that people occupy roles at work; people can use various degrees of their selves in the roles that they perform at the job. The self-in-role have various calibrations, which span from engagement to disengagement. People can either bring in or leave out their personal selves while performing work roles, for people to perform well in work role performances they need both self-expression and self-employment. Kahn believe that these are antecedents for engagement (Kahn 1990)

After Kahn, Engagement has been conceptualized in various different ways. One approach is to consider work engagement as the opposite of work burnout. Maslach (2001) describes engagement as the positive antithesis of burnout. Burnout is when employees are exhausted, cynic and inefficient which are the three dimensions of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (Maslach 2001). In contrary engaged employees are energetic, involved and efficient. To determine the factors that lead to either burnout or engagement Maslach describes six areas of work-life: Workload, control, reward and recognition, community and social support, perceived fairness and values. These constitute the basis for burnout theory (Saks 2006). An alternative view considers engagement to be negatively related to burnout, but still an independent concept from burnout. Schaufeli, Salanova, Gonzálés-Romá & Bakker (2002) looks at engagement as an independent concept that is not momentarily, but a more persistent and pervasive affective-cognitive state. Work engagement, is characterized by a high level of energy and strong identification with one’s job whereas burnout is the opposite. They argue that Engagement is a:

”…positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is categorized by vigor, dedication and absorption”

Vigor is when the employees have a high level of energy and mental resilience while working. Dedication: refers to being very involved in one’s work and experience a sense of significance, enthusiasm and challenge. Absorption is being fully concentrated and happily absorbed in the work one is doing, so that time passes quickly (Bakker & Demerouti 2008). These ways of conceptualizing work engagement: Kahn who references it to the work role (Kahn 1990) and those who uses burnout theory to conceptualize engagement and who references it to the work activity in it selves, are important (Maslach, Schaufeli & Leiter 2001). Furthermore it is important to notice that in a business context the reference is not the work role or the activity in it selves, as it is in academia, it is the reference to the organisation. However current scientific knowledge and the link between the research and businesses declares that increasing work engagement pays of. Academic conceptualizations define engagement in different ways but they agree that it entails energy dedication and absorption in the job (Bakker & Leiter 2010).

For the purpose of this paper on engagement I am going to use the definition by Schaufeli and look at engagement as a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is categorized by vigor, dedication and absorption.

Section 4.1 explains ‘what’ engagement is. To have a further look at ‘how’ engagement occur, which antecedents should be present to have engagement and which factors influences engagement, this next section 4.2 is going to be about how to develop an engaging culture. This culture has to contain the antecedents and that the elements necessary for engagement to create actual engaged employees.

4.2 Engagement culture Because I am investigating engagement within the ‘walls’ of an organisation I am going to look at the culture within an organisation: which elements and antecedents are necessary to have

engaged employees. In this section I am going to include different aspects of organisational culture, to explain how engagement occur within an organisation. I include this section 4.2 to broaden my theoretical view of the concept engagement and to include an additional theoretical approach to strengthen my theoretical background for my analysis. Each scholar, who has investigated engagement do so in different manners, and many of them limit their research to few antecedents. To elaborate on more theories, I have included more than just the theory of one scholar. I have chosen the research done by the most well known scholars within the topic: Schaufeli, Bakker, Demerouti and Maslach but also included this section 4.2 about organisational culture, due to the relevance to my research. I have made this choice with the Hermeneutic viewpoint in mind. People are different and therefore it can be hard to relate one theory precisely to this individual case. It is very narrow to approach the case by using just one theory. Therefore I have included more.

Engagement is not a one-time ting therefore the organisation have to maintain and enhance a culture where high levels of work engagement thrives. Organizational culture determines engagement at two levels: the employees creates and releases energy in proportion to how they are treated as employees on the first level, and on the second level they channel that energy into competitive advantage through focusing on the key objectives of the organisation, in this case: service in combination with efficiency (Schneider 2009). All organisations have culture and it affects not only its employees but it also extend to impact those who are in contact with the organization. As mentioned in section 1, the introduction: frontline employees in a service organisation are very important and therefore the culture is significantly important, because it might also impact the customers. Organisational culture in general can be defined as:

‘ … the sense people have about what their organization values, believes in, promotes, endorses and stands for’

(Schneider 2009) To create an engagement culture there has to be certain antecedents present. These antecedents are safety, trust and fairness but also the role of the work itself matter to engagement culture. These are the antecedents that I am going to base my analysis of engagement in a service organisation on (Schneider 2009).

4.2.1 Trust, fairness and safety To have engaged employees, they have to feel safe in the culture and trust the people that they work with, furthermore they have to perceive fairness within the culture. Safety encourages the employees to take actions on their own initiative. Trust in the organisation and the management is crucial for engagement, without trust engagement cannot exist. Trust relies on fair treatment within the organisation. Perceived fairness is very important for engagement. These three elements of engagement culture are interconnected and equally important for engagement.

Trust is about believing in each other. Believing that one can count on others to do what is right for you, regardless of whether you have checked up on them or not. Trust is important in all relationships, therefore also important within an organisation especially when employees feel vulnerable. If the employees trust the management and the organisation they feel free to put their energy and commitment to the work. When there is no trust the employees spend their energy on protecting themselves. Trust goes both ways: the employees invest their time, talent and energy in the organisation and then count on the organisation to not let them down and to support them. The organisation trusts the employees to return this investment in them by engagement. Trust can vary. Employees can put they trust in different aspects of the organisation: the leaders, the management, and the system or an individual persons. Mostly it is the management that has to create and earn the trust of the employees (Schneider 2009)

The key to having a good relationship with employees is fairness: both tangible fairness and intangible fairness. The fairness comes from the leaders. What the leaders believe about their employees determine how the leaders act towards their employees. McGregor’s X and Y theory divides the leaders up in two categories: X and Y. X leaders belief that their employees work just for money and do not need involvement or creativity to work hard. Y leaders believe that their employees strive to do their best and love the challenge of doing a good job. Leaders in the theory Y belief-system create jobs, which challenge, offers opportunities and personal growth. Therefore fairness goes beyond trust and into the work it self. However fairness is connected to trust because leaders create trust by being fair (McGregor 1960). Fairness can be looked upon in two different ways: tangible fairness and intangible fairness. Tangibles are money (salary, bonuses or commission), promotions and access to training.

Intangibles have to do with how the decisions on who gets the reward or not. These decisions have to be consistent and perceived fair. If the culture is fair it can lead to trust and trust leads to engagement (Schneider 2009).

Safety, relates to the safety that fosters trust in the organisation. A safe culture encourages the employees to take action on their own initiative without being afraid of being punished or layoff, but also without people gossiping about mistakes and errors behind each other’s backs. The key elements of having a safe culture are open communication and trust (Schneider 2009).

These three elements of organisational culture foster an engagement culture. To be engaged the employees have to feel safe, trust the organisation and perceive the leaders and the organisation to be fair.

4.2.2 The work The next antecedents for having engaged employees are the work it self. The work that people actually do is what absorbs us and what we feel enthusiastic about; this is what gives people the feeling of being fulfilled at work. People do their work because they find it meaningful, and because they work in an organisation and for managers who are competent and fair, and in which they trust. To elaborate on the different elements of ‘work’ I have chosen two frameworks: The Six Areas of Worklife and The Job Demand and The Job Resource Model.

4.2.3 Six Areas of Worklife The Six Areas of Worklife is a framework constructed within burnout theory. As described in section 4.1 some scholars have used burnout theory as an approach to work engagement. The trend in burnout theory is that the theory has become more general and that the research is shifting towards the opposite of burnout theory: work engagement. Instead of looking only at the negative side, researchers recently have extended their interest to the positive side of the psychology, with the focus on human’s optimal functioning (Schaufeli et. Al. 2001) The Six Areas of Worklife model focuses on the degree of match or mismatch between a person and the six areas of his/her job. The larger the gab is between the person and the job, the greater is the risk of burnout, and opposite: the smaller the gab is, the greater the likelihood of having engaged employees. The six areas of work life are:

Workload, control, reward, community, fairness and values

Each area compiles the full range of organizational factors related to research on burnout and engagement; they each bring a distinct perspective of people and their work settings. This framework encompasses the antecedents of burnout and engagement (Maslach, Schaufeli & Leiter 2001). The next sections elaborate on the six areas.

The first area is workload. Workload is the load of work people has to do, and the skills the employee requires to do the job with success. A Mismatch in workload is when there is to high demand on the employee this can result in exhaustion. Lack of the right skills for the job can also result in exhaustion and burnout. Emotional work like frontline work can be especially draining, if the employee has to display an emotion, that they do not feel. Like being happy towards the customers without being it. This makes it significantly important that workload is not a mismatch. The right amount of workload can lead to engagement (Maslach, Schaufeli & Leiter 2001)

The second area is control. Employees need control over their work so that they can stay in control of their responsibilities and over the resources that they need to do their job. The third area is reward. Employees also need rewards both financially and socially in the form of salary and appreciation. Recognition is important for the employee’s feelings of efficacy. I will elaborate further on reward in section 4.2.4 about the Job Demand and Job Resource model. Fourth, employees need a sense of positive connection with others in the workplace. People thrive and function best when they share comfort, happiness and humour with people they like and respect. Mutual respect is essential in a workplace therefore fairness in a workplace is very important. Fairness is having equal workloads and pay. Fairness is also trust in each other, trust in people to not cheat each other and handle things inappropriately. If the employees do not perceive the workplace fair, it can foster cynicism and exhaustion, which relate to burnout. Values within the organisation are also important. The employees have to share the values to not feel constrained by the job. Having equal values are important for having engaged employees (Maslach, Schaufeli & Leiter 2001). The six areas are all important, however people can perceive the importance of the different areas differently.

People are individuals and therefore have different opinions about what is more important. Whether reward has a higher weight than values or the other way around. These six areas of worklife have their origins in burnout theory, but because engagement can be seen as the positive antithesis of burnout, good matches between the six areas can be associated with engagement. To further elaborate on the antecedents for engagement I have included section 4.2.4 on The Job Demand and Job Resource Model. This explains which things have to be done in a work place and which resources are necessary to get them done to satisfaction.

4.2.4 Job Demand & Job Resources The job demand and job resource model is more specific when looking at the job, than the six areas of worklife is. Thus I have included this model to get a more holistic picture of what comprises an engaging workplace (Maslach, Schaufeli & Leiter 2001). This framework encompasses the antecedents of engagement as job demand and job resources (Schaufeli & Bakker 2004). Job demand are categorized as

“ … physical, psychological, social or organizational aspects of the job that require sustained physical or psychological effort and are therefore associated with certain physiological or psychological costs”

Job demands are things that have to be done in the job, they are not necessarily negative but they can be, if the requirements are too high and associated with high costs, this can lead to responses like depression, anxiety or burnout (Schaufeli & Bakker 2004)

Job resources refer to

“ … physical, psychological, social or organisational aspects of the job that either reduce job demand, are functional in achieving work goals or that stimulate personal growth learning and development”

Job resources are important for getting things done (job demands), but they are also important as an independent concept. Job resources have different levels: at the task level the employees receive performance feedback, at the interpersonal-level the employees receive supports from their colleagues and at the organizational level they receive supervisory responses and coaching (Schaufeli & Bakker 2004). Job demands and job resources, used within positive psychology are antecedents to engagement. When demands are too high the employees experience work overload, personal conflicts and the lack of job resources like social support and decision involvement can lead to various negative outcomes like physical illness, turnover, and absenteeism (Schaufeli & Bakker 2004). The Job Demand and Resource Model claim that high job demand is associated with exhaustion and burnout and lacking job resources are associated with disengagement. This model is mainly negative but used as a positive tool it shows the antecedents for engagement, it is also applicable in engagement theory because is assumes that burnout develops with disregard to the occupation that people are in. When job demands are high and job resources are low, burnout occur, and for the opposite with reasonable job demands and high job resources engagement occurs (Demerouti et. Al. 2001).

In addition to section 4.1 Conceptualization that explains the different conceptualizations that has been developed for engagement and section 4.2 Engagement Culture that comprises the different antecedents for engagement, this paper also includes section 4.3 on Social Exchange Theory. This section gives reasons to ‘why’ people respond to the antecedents by being engaged.

4.3 Social exchange theory The frameworks discussed above, deals with the psychological conditions that are necessary for engagement. They indicate what engagement is, and which factors influences engagement, but they do not deal with why these factors influence the employees. Social Exchange Theory gives a stronger explanation for why individuals respond to these conditions, and why work engagement occurs (Saks 2006).

Social exchange theory is one of the most influential theories used for understanding workplace behaviour. It involves a series of interactions that generate obligations; these

interactions are interdependent and rely on the actions of other persons (Cropanzano & Mitchell 2005). The relationship, developed through these interactions, evolves over time into trusting, loyal and mutual commitments as long as they act along with the rules of exchange. This relationship matches the description of engagement as being a two-way relationship (Saks 2006). Beside the rules of exchange SET also consist of the fundamental ideas of resource exchange and relationship that emerges. The rules and norms of SET include many dimensions but for the simplicity of this paper, I will use the two main sets of rules: rules of reciprocity and rules of negotiation. Reciprocity is when an exchange requires a two-way transaction: something has to be given and something has to be returned. There are three different types of reciprocity:

Reciprocity; as a transactional pattern of interdependent exchanges, reciprocity; as a folk belief and reciprocity; as a moral norm.

I will put my main focus on the first type: reciprocity as interdependent exchange where an action by one party leads to a response by another party. Reciprocity as a norm and as a belief also has some importance because people have different perceptions of reciprocity (Cropanzano & Mitchell 2005). Reciprocity is a key element in employment relationship between the organisation and the employee. Studies have shown that equity and equality in the employment relationship is very important for work engagement. Employees expect the organisation to provide certain benefits in return for them providing specific contributions to the organisation. This can be categorized as a psychological contract between the organisation and the employee (Geurts et.al. 1998)

The other set of rules are the rules of negotiation. An exchange can also happen through negotiation. A negotiated agreement tends to be more explicit than reciprocal exchanges. This rule set is often applied to economic transactions regarding the job, for example salary and tangible benefits (Cropanzano & Mitchell 2005). The framework of SET can be organized in a two-dimensional matrix. It presents six types of resources in exchange theory:

Love, status, information, money, goods and services

One dimension refers to a resource’s particularism. This means that the worth of the resource varies based on its source. Love, is for an example highly particularistic because its importance depends on where it comes from. The second dimension is concreteness, this refers to how tangible or specific the resource is (Cropanzano & Mitchell 2005). Most research has been related to workplace relationships, because of the advantages of having good social exchange relationships in organisations. Good relationships give effective work behaviour and positive employee attitudes, which as mentioned before are antecedents for engagement. Successful exchanges can cause individuals to become committed and engaged. This framework provides an explanation to why employees react to the antecedents of engagement provided at the workplace, with actual engagement towards to job that they are holding (Cropanzano & Mitchell 2005).

To be able to asses engagement one need to know what engagement is, how it occur by having different antecedent and why these result in engagement. However to assess engagement practical this paper is going to rely on the construct of two existing questionnaires: the UWES and the Gallup Q12. I am not going to conduct questionnaires but I will use them in the development of my interview guide for collection empirical data through interviews.

4.4. Questionnaires Questionnaires are structured, easy to apply and can be used worldwide and across cultures, age and other demographics. The questionnaires provides consistency and stability to the data collected (Schaufeli & Bakker 2004) Though this kind of instrument is usually used for quantitative studies and I am conducting a qualitative study I will provide a short overview of two common applied questionnaires within this field of study. I do this because I will use these questionnaires later in my research.

4.4.1 The UWES One questionnaire used to assess engagement is the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale(UWES). See appendix 2. It is a three dimensional questionnaire. It has been used in various studies, which has validated the instrument. It is an established and very applied scale for measuring

employee engagement in line with Schaufeli’s definition of engagement (Slåtten & Mehmetoglu 2011). The UWES includes items for assessing the three dimensions of engagement that is included in Schaufeli’s definition of engagement: vigor, dedication and absorption (Bakker & Demerouti 2008). Originally the UWES included 24 items but after a psychometric evaluation 7 items were eliminated with 17 items remaining: UWES-17. Also a 15-item version has been used called the UWES-15. The UWES items are scored on a 7-point frequency scale which range from 0(never) to 6(always) (Bakker & Leiter 2010). The three dimensions are very closely related and engagement assessed by using the UWES questionnaire seems to be a uniform construct that is composed by the three different but related dimensions of the instrument. Therefore it is recommended to use the total score of the UWES for practical purposes when assessing work engagement (Bakker & Leiter 2010)

4.4.2 Gallup Q12 Another questionnaire is the Gallup Q12 instrument. See appendix 1. The Gallup Q12 is an instrument developed to measure the antecedents of engagement in terms of perceived job resources rather than the employees’ experienced engagement in terms of involvement, satisfaction and enthusiasm (Bakker & Leiter 2012). Job resources refer to social support from colleagues and supervisors, performance feedback, skill variety, autonomy and learning opportunities. These are all factors that influences engagement (Bakker & Demerouti 2008) The Q12 questionnaire has 12-items that are scored on a 5-point rating scale ranging from 1 to five. The 12 items measures both actionable and performance related elements of an engaging workplace. Gallup uses the scale to categorize respondents as engaged, not engaged or actively disengaged. The Q 12 has been used worldwide and been administrated to more than 7 million employees (Bakker & Leiter 2010). Gallup in a 2009 Meta-Analysis has concluded that practitioners and scholars can apply the Q12 measure in various situations with confidence that the measure captures important information (Harter et.al. 2009). But critics of the instruments argue that Gallup’s concept of employee engagement is almost identical with overall job satisfaction and that little psychometric data are available for the Q12, which makes it questionable as an instrument for measuring engagement. Thu I am not going to use the questionnaires as they are, but as a guiding tool for developing my interview guide. (Bakker & Leiter 2012)

5. Methodology The previous chapter 4 describes the theoretical framework for my paper. This is preliminary to my analysis. This chapter 5 includes all my considerations on methodology. I am going to address the chosen methodological framework, my reasoning for making a qualitative research paper, the development of my interview guide, the data collection process and finally how the data analysis is going to be conducted.

5.1 Framework To approach the field of research that I have chosen in my problem statement, I am going to make an empirical paper with a combination of a deductive and an inductive approach. Deduction is where one gathers knowledge about engagement and relates the theory to the case. Deduction is a linear process where the research is following the proceeding from theory to empirical research. Induction however takes its departure not in theory but in the empirical research and then proceed to the theoretical results. The deductive approach is used when I find knowledge and theory about the concept engagement and the inductive approach is used when I create new knowledge based on my empirical study. This combined approach is called abduction.

Furthermore to understand the position from, which I am going to base my paper on. I will rely on the common philosophical position of Hermeneutics or interpretation. Hermeneutics refers to interpreting and understanding social events by analysing their meaning to the people involved and their culture. This philosophical position empathizes the importance of context in this case the context the organisation within Madkompagniet and the theoretical framework and the study. The understanding of human intensions are important because individuals act out of their own free will and are able to choose different behavioural patterns. When analysing social science and social behaviour interpretation is crucial to understand why individuals choose to react as they do. The hermeneutic circle refer to relating the whole to the part and the part to the whole which is why I have chosen to conduct an qualitative case study of work engagement at Madkompagniet, to achieve a more holistic picture of the case (Eriksson & Kovalainen 2008).

5.2 Theoretical background Preliminary to my research I will state that for the purpose of this paper I will use the definition by Schaufeli that claims that engagement is a ”…positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is categorized by vigor, dedication and absorption”. Furthermore the research within the field of studies presents a lot of antecedents for engagement. The antecedents that I will put my focus on are safety, trust, fairness and the work in it selves. To address the later I will use the job demand and job resources model and the six areas of worklife. I will put especially focus on feedback and recognition. In a service company one cannot measure performance by quantity or speed. Thu the appreciation of high performance has to be expressed by positive feedback and recognition, which leads to engagement. Furthermore I will use section 4.3 about SET to give reason to why these antecedents influence engagement.

5.3 Qualitative research I have chosen to conduct a qualitative research, which as the name implies focuses on qualitative information such as word, sentences and narratives. A qualitative study gives room for opinions, feelings and different perceptions about a specific concept in a specific context. A qualitative research method provides a holistic and detailed picture of a concept and of a case. The researcher can take part of the study because it often involves a two-way communication, this makes this kind of study flexible because it gives the researcher the possibility to go in depth with a specific topic, and gives the respondents the possibility to respond and ask questions directly (Eriksson & Kovalainen 2008).

In this thesis I have chosen a qualitative research approach due to my research problem where I aim to investigate engagement among employees in a service organisation. The purpose of this paper is to provide a holistic and detailed picture of my chosen concept related to the empirical research. A qualitative study allows for individualism and differences (Eriksson & Kovalainen 2008).

As my research approach I have chosen to make a case study. A case study presents complex research problems in a personal and down-to-earth format, which is easy to comprehend. I have chosen this approach to consider the real-life case of engagement within Madkompagniet. This approach emphasises detailed and holistic knowledge, which is based

on the analysis of empirical sources. Case studies aims to make room for diversity and complexity, which is important with social studies of human beings, in line with the hermeneutic position (Eriksson & Kovalainen 2008).

There are several ways of conducting a case study but due to the chosen framework and research problem I have chosen the intensive research design where I focus on finding out as much as I can about my one case. This approach emphasizes interpretation and understanding of the case, it aims to understand and explore the case from the inside, and develop an understanding of the case from the perspectives of the people involved in the case. To be able to conduct the case study on Madkompagniet I am going to observe and do interviews with the staff to obtain knowledge about the case. To know what is interesting about the case I have to know what other researcher have said about the same concept therefore I start my paper by conducting a literature review of the existing theory, I will use these theories in my analysis of the case. The theory is going to be the background for the interpretation of the case.

The whole framework is the template for the research. To conduct the data collection I am going to do in-depth interviews with the staff of Madkompagniet. To do this I am going to develop an interview guide on the basis of the section about the questionnaires (Eriksson & Kovalainen 2008). The development of the interview guide is elaborated on in the below section 5.4.

5.4 Development of the interview guide The collection of data for my empirical investigation will be done by in-depth interviews, with a combination of open-ended and closed questions. The interviews are conducted by interviewing the employees of Madkompagniet. I will on the basis of the two questionnaires described in section 4.4 develop a framework for the interviews to get the full picture of the engagement situation at the café. The interview guide can be found in appendix 3. Some of my questions are developed on the basis of the UWES that investigate the elements of Schaufeli’s definition: vigor, dedication and absorption and the others are developed on the basis of the Gallup Q12 which investigate engagement on the basis of job resources.

My interview guide contains three preliminary questions for the respondent: Age, the period of time worked at Madkompagniet and the average number of hours worked per week. These questions serve to warm up the respondent and furthermore the responses might be useful in interpreting the data. After that I have divided the guide into two sections: one to investigate engagement at Madkompagniet and the second to investigate which antecedents are present related to engagement. Both section are further divided into subsections. The first is divided into ‘feelings about the job’ and ‘sense of time while being at the workplace’. The second is divided into ‘expectations to the workplace’, ‘endorsement and support’ and ‘changes of feelings towards the organisation’. The interview guide encompasses 26 questions, which are formulated by the use of the questions included in the UWES and the Gallup Q 12. The UWES is mainly used to figure out if the employees are engaged and the Gallup Q12 is used to formulate questions that investigate the reasons for engagement. Critics argue that Gallup Q12 is not applicable alone to assess engagement therefore I have chosen to use them both. Combining the two instruments also allow for a more extensive data collection assessing both the engagement and the antecedents (Eriksson & Kovalainen 2008).

5.5 Data collection process After having developed the interview guide the next step was to conduct my data collection. To collect the empirical data that I need for my research I will conduct in-depth interviews. The advantage of making in-depth interviews is that it allows for a direct interaction with the respondent. They can ask questions if there is something they do not understand and the interview gives me the opportunity to deviate from the guide if I feel it is necessary to do so. For an example I will ask most of the respondents to give examples when they answer the question this gives more depth to the different areas of the interview. Furthermore an interview gives more room for personality and individualism and the interview transcripts are anonymous so that the respondents can respond openly and without hesitation.

In order to collect my data after having developed the interview guide I ask the employees at Madkompagniet to participate and I experienced that all the employees were willing to participate in the interviews. Out of the staff I chose six respondents. The age span of the

respondents goes from age 17 to age 48 and they work very different hours during a week. The respondents work from as little as five hours to as much as 35 hours per week, which is almost fulltime. All the respondents have worked at the organisation for different time periods spanning from 1 year to 4 years. I used these respondents to get a holistic picture of the staff.

The interviews were to last 10 to 15 minutes, which I recorded on tape with the approval of the respondents. The whole process is going to provide me with a lot of recorded information. To make the most use of the interviews and to be able to work with the data I will make transcripts of the recordings of the interviews. My approach to analysing the collected data is elaborated on in section 5.6 below.

5.6 Structure of my analytic My approach to the analysis of the collected data is that, I will start by making a general description of the case. This is a case record, where I will describe very briefly Madkompagniet’s value proposition. I will also explain how they create that value, how frontline employees are important to a service organisation like Madkompagniet, followed by a case record in thematic order. A coding process of the transcripts of the interviews derives the concepts and themes presented in the case record. To further elaborate on these concepts I conduct a within-case analysis to compare the data in search for similarities and differences across the case and in contrast to the theory. After this analytic process I discuss my findings in relation to the theory to look for accordance with the theory and for deficiencies. I finalises the research by presenting my conclusions.

6. Analysis To do an intensive case study research I have talked to the employees of Madkompagniet, I have observed them performing their job and I have used their services as a customer. By doing this I have collected data telling us about this case. The aim of this analysis is to explore and understand Madkompagniet as a case of engagement. For the reader to understand the case and the organisation at Madkompagniet I will start my analysis by comprising a case record of Madkompaniget including sensitizing the concepts. To elaborate on the case record I will conduct a with-in case analysis to find patterns in the empirical data and compare them to

the propositions from section 6.1 that are based on the existing data. I do this to link the empirical data to the theory. I will present my analysis and my findings in a narrative form.

6.1 Case record Too take the reader into the real-life settings of the case of Madkompagniet. I will start my analysis by making a general description of the case. The first section is about the value proposition that Madkompagniet provide to their customers, how they create this value, how the frontline workers are important for the value proposition and an explanation of the complex staff situation that Madkompagniet uses. These aspects are important for the understanding of the case. To further elaborate on the case I will, by coding the transcripts of the interviews identify and sensitize the concepts that are significant to the research.

The main goals of the organisation in Madkompagniet are to provide superior customer service and high quality products. They do so by putting a lot of effort into finding the best suppliers of food items and suppliers of other items for the kitchen and the café. These things gets processed into high quality café menus, take-away food and catering menus for larger parties. To provide high quality and superior customer service Madkompagniet needs good frontline workers. As mentioned in section 1 it is very important to have engaged frontline workers because they are the face of the organisation. Also engaged employees perform better.

Even though Madkompagniet strives after these standards they have no specific focus on engagement. They hire employees that they like and believe to fit well in the organisation. The new employees get trained by observing their colleagues and try on their own. Madkompagniet have a very complex staff situation. The two owners both work at the café full time. They function as kitchen staff, as well as serving customers and handling the administrative within the business. They are the two only fulltime staff members. To compliment them they have a large number of youth workers and some flextime workers, who have some special needs: their workload cannot be too extensive. The flextime workers work on average 20 hours per week and the youth works everything between 2 hours per week to fulltime during holiday periods. The staff composition limits hierarchy and creates a very open working environment where everybody has tried to work almost at all stations of

the workplace. This makes it easy for the different staff members to relate to each other and work together as a whole. Respondent number 2 confirms this in the interview.

“…there is no one who works more or less than others , there is no division among the employees or hierarchy. This means that everybody gets to move around the different work stations1”

Only the owners sometimes act as managers if something is out of order. However there is always someone at all times who bear the responsibility for the café, but it is not necessarily the oldest or the employees who has been there the longest. It is a very flat organisation where the staffs feel equal responsible for each other, the organisation and their customers

Furthermore I will expand this case record to be about common themes in the data collected. The case record is in thematic order. This draft of the case has emphasis on common themes, issues and conceptual categories. The main purpose of this is to construct the meaning by linking empirical patterns, to form a holistic configuration: the case. Over the course of the interviews, patterns quickly emerged in terms of the answers to the questions covered by the interview guide. Each interviewee gave broadly similar descriptions in relation to their personal feelings at work, their perception of time, their relationship to each other at the workplace and their overall satisfaction. The descriptions provided by participants were very different in length and use of words. After the six respondents I was satisfied that I had carried out a sufficient number of interviews to ensure that a consensus could be generated about the different themes and concepts.

By observing and roughly coding the transcripts of the interviews I found some themes that the employees emphasise: satisfaction, energy, responsibility, good social environment, open communication, and the perception of time flying by quickly. These relates to the definition of engagement and the antecedents for engagement. Satisfaction, energy and the time aspect (absorption) all relates to the definition by Scaufeli: ”…a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is categorized by vigor, dedication and absorption”. Good social environment and open communication relates to the antecedents connected to the Job Demand and Job

1 Direct translation, transcript of interview 2 question 5 see appendix

Resources model. Responsibility relates to trust and other elements mentioned in the interviews relates to fairness and the job it self. This will be elaborated on later in the analysis process.

The interviews only revealed few issues. The employee’s responses to the question about recognition and encouragement were very inconsistent. Some answered that they got plenty and some answered that they only got very little. All six respondents expressed that there is a lack of clear feedback on progression and performance in a time aspect. However nobody expressed it to be an issue. Only one respondent indicated that, she would like there to be more feedback. The most common feedback that they mentioned was oral feedback during work or around closing hours from colleagues. The answers about receiving praise from management are very varying. Respondent number six however do express that the girls who work afternoons and evenings to not receive that much praise because the bosses are not present at the workplace during those hours. The last issue that occurred in the responses was that, some of the employees express a lack of possibility for development and learning. They do not agree whether or not their work situation gives them possibility for further learning. Several of the respondents expresses that they feel like the work is monotonous and that this prevent further development.

These two issues relate to the Job Demand and Job Resource model and will be elaborated on later. Of both the issues and the positive themes that occur in the responses the most consistent statement in all six responses is that they describe Madkompagniet as a good work place.

“…It is a good work place2”

They also all agree that they like coming there and they feel happy and satisfied when they are working. They all like to be at work for a longer period of time and generally they all perceive time to pas quickly. This is some of the determinants for absorption (Bakker & Demerouti 2008). They put a lot of emphasis on the social aspect of their work. They work as a team with

limited hierarchy and with open communication, they feel responsibility towards each other and the organisation, and as one of the respondent expresses her selves:

“…we always find a solution and work things out in a good manner3”

This statement and the later mentioned themes all relate to job resources, trust, fairness and the work itself. The coding process revealed the most common themes and issues in the responses. These themes and concepts revealed in the interview are consistent with the conceptualization of engagement.

The coding process uncovered that the employees of Madkompagniet are generally engaged in their workplace. However it is hard to conclude whether or not employees are indeed engaged because engagement is very elusive. There are levels of engagement, it is not tangible and it varies from person to person how they show engagement, and how much they put into a workplace due to engagement. I claim that the employees at Madkompagniet indicate that they are more or less engaged. I claim this due to the fact that they all articulate that they are satisfied, dedicated, feel vigor, and are absorped in their job. To further elaborate on these I will conduct a Within-Case analysis, where I compare the responses in search for similarities and differences across the case and in contrast to the theory. The purpose of this is to conclude which factors influences engagement. To do this with-in case analysis I am going to relate the empirical data to section 4.2 about Engagement culture and section 4.3 about SET.

6.2 Within-case Analysis To elaborate more on the above-mentioned themes and issues related to the theory I will go in depth with section 4.2: Engagement culture. I do this to see if the antecedents for engagement are present at Madkompagniet. Because the elements of engagement are present I will investigate the concepts that influences the engagement and furthermore use section 4.3 Social Exchange Theory to explain why they react to the antecedents by being engaged.

6.2.1 The culture As mentioned in section 4.2 Engagement Culture determines engagement at two levels. The level where they built up energy and releases it in proportion to how they are treated. On the

3 Direct translation, transcript interview 3 question 6 see appendix

second level the employee channel this energy into the organisation by focusing on the key objectives in the organisation, this second level will I explain by using social exchange theory. Madkompagniet’s key objectives are described in section 6.1.

For employees to built up energy and vigor and to become dedicated and absorbed in their jobs the antecedents for engagement have to be present. The antecedents that I have chosen to focus on are trust, fairness and safety and the job in itself. To elaborate on the work in itself I have included the antecedents of The Six Areas of Worklife and the antecedents of the Job Demand and Job Resource Model.

Four out of six respondents mentions responsibility in their interviews: responsibility to each other, to the managers and responsibilities given to them by the owners. The respondents says that they get a lot of responsibility and that they are trusted

“We get to close the café. …they trust us and they believe that we can do it and do the things good4”

This is an indication of trust. Trust is about believing in each other. It goes both ways (Schneider 2009). The respondents also talks about open communication and close teamwork. The social aspect at Madkompagniet is good. The relationships within Madkompagniet are positive and the employees and the management have a friendly relationship. One respondent implies that the relationship can be too friendly, that the leaders have to be leaders in some situations. This is a perception of individuals. Overall the respondents imply that they have good relationships with both their colleagues and their leaders. Internal relationships are important for trust and trust is important for engagement. Fairness is also important for engagement. At Madkompagniet the leaders are theory Y leaders. They believe that they employees strive to do their best and that they love the challenge of doing a good job. The management show this by giving the employees responsibility and the employees show this by doing a good job. One respondent says:

“ … nobody would even think about sending bad or wrong food out of the kitchen, then they would rather make a new dish5”

Furthermore two of the respondents mention the work process within the café. Everybody gets to work at the different workstations and nobody works more that others. The employees get rotated in doing the different jobs. The workload is fairly distributed and the employees help each other out. Fairness is not only how the employees are treated it is also how they are given tangible tings. At Madkompagniet all the under 18 workers are paid equally and the over 18 workers are paid equally. This is tangible fairness. Everybody is treated equally and listened to. Fairness creates trust and is very important for having good and healthy relationships within the organisation. Healthy relationships and trust are important for having engagement as stated before. Trust and fairness is a part of the social aspect of the job.

Fairness creates trust and trust creates safety. A safe culture encourages the employees to take action on their own initiative without being afraid of being punished. The key to having a safe culture is open communication and trust (Schneider 2009). Stated above, Madkompagniet have a trust culture and from the interviews, the employees tell that the communication within the organization is very open. Several respondents feel like they are being listen too at work and one respondent empathize that the employees talk a lot about thinks to improve and to foster trust. One respondent emphasize that the management show consideration towards the employees even though they are having an “off-day” as one respondent calls it. One respondent makes it very clear that she feels safe in her job no matter what.

“…it is a kitchen that we work in and you cannot always do everything perfect6”

This is a good example that the employees feel safe to do mistakes. The respondents all say that they know what is expected of them, and that the management have high expectations they also all talks about responsibilities. Even though there is high expectations the

5 Direct translation, transcript of interview 1 additional comments see appendix 6 Direct translation, transcript of interview 3 question 6 see appendix

employees still feel that there is room for mistakes and initiative. Everybody makes mistakes, but not all organisational cultures have room for them. However the interviews indicate that Madkompagniet have an organisational culture where the employees feel safe.

Trust, fairness and safety are antecedents for having engagement culture. However the job in itself is also important for having engaged employees. The work that people actually do is what absorbs us. and what we feel enthusiastic about (Schneider 2009). To elaborate on the different aspects of work I have chosen two approaches in my section about the theoretical framework. I will look at the six areas of worklife and the Job Demand and Job Resource model.

6.2.2 The work itself The six areas of worklife are: workload, control, reward, community, fairness and values. As I have already touched upon fairness in the section above I will not include it in this section. The degree of match or mismatch between a person and the areas of his environment is what determines whether we have a case of burnout or a case of engagement (Schaufeli et. A. 2001).

Workload has to be matched to the employees so that they do not get exhausted. Frontline work can be especially demanding and mentally challenging. Therefore it is important with frontline employees to have the right amount of workload. A good example is the one respondent who work flexitime at Madkompagniet. She works 20 hours a week in 5 hour sifts so that she not gets over strained. She is as qualified as any for the job but because of pain the workload is matched to her need. One respondent mentions that the job sometimes gets too much for her but they all agree that they help each other and talk about the situations. The managers and the employees help each other so that the workload in the end matches the need of the employees.

Furthermore the employees need control over their job. They need open boundaries to control their work, the responsibilities given to them and to control the resources need to perform well. The trust culture that Madkompagniet have, gives the employee this control because the managers trust the employees to do well at work.

The next area of the six areas is reward. Reader might have noticed that pay has not been mentioned. This qualitative study does not take to many tangible things into account but to quickly go over salary. One respondent mentions that:

“It does not pay out moneywise…7”

Reward at Madkompagniet is verbal consistent of appreciation and praise. The employees also gets 25% discount on food and goods purchased at the café. Madkompagniet does not have any tangible reward systems and several of the respondents indicate that that praise is very irregular. This is one of the themes that I identified as an issue in the case record. They all indicates that they feel appreciated in different ways but the responses to questions about appreciation and praise are very inconsistent:

“I feel that my bosses are good at telling us when there is something that we do well…”8 “…it is not something that happens that often, I don’t think so” 9 “…we do not go around praising each other”10 “I feel appreciated, it is nice to get informed that you are doing a good job”11 “…trust… that is also some kind of appreciation12”

Besides matching workload and reward, people also need community. People need positive connections with others in the workplace. People thrive the best when they share comfort, happiness and humour with people they like and respect (Maslach, Schaufeli & Leiter 2001). Community at Madkompagniet is a mayor factor. All the respondents talk about good colleagues, solidarity and teamwork. They all feel like each other are doing the best they can and they feel responsible for each other to do a good job. Also many of the younger girls are friends outside of the workplace and the managers know their employees outside the workplace and takes interest in them as private people as well as employees.

7 Direct translation, transcript of interview 5 question 2 see appendix 8 Direct translation, transcript of interview 2 question 15 see appendix 9 Direct translation, transcript of interview 3 question 15 see appendix 10 Direct translation, transcript of interview 1 question 15 see appendix 11 Direct translation, transcript of interview 4 question 15 see appendix 12 Direct translation, transcript of interview 5 question 15 see appendix

One respondent mentions:

“ It is obvious when we are many young girls that everybody has their own opinion about how to act at work, if you are serious or unserious13”

However the same respondent also mentions that:

“Primarily I think that everybody are really good at performing their jobs14”

The responses in the interview indicate that the employees all match the community within the organisation. The last element of the model is values, which I am only going to touch upon superficial. The values of Madkompagniet are shown through their value proposition. They strive to provide high quality in all aspect of their business. The employees have to match these values to perform well in the organisation. The interviews indicate that they do match because the employees also strive to do well.

This analysis of the Six Areas of Worklife indicates that Madkompagniet’s employees and the areas more or less match in all areas. This points to Madkompagniet having engaged employees due to the matches in the six areas. This model is a mixture between the three opening antecedents: trust, fairness and safety and the job itself because it includes both fairness and workload. It is a mixture of feelings and the work itself, this mix is important to look at because this is an analysis of human behaviour, which varies from person to person. The Job Demand and Job Resource model is more specific when looking at the job than the six areas of worklife is. I have included this model because it gives the reader a more holistic picture of what comprises an engaging workplace (Schaufeli & Bakker 2004).

Job demands are things that have to be done in a job. The employees of Madkompagniet both work in the kitchen and as frontline workers as waitresses and checkout assistants. A café job is both physically demanding and psychologically demanding. Frontline work is especially demanding. The employees all mention that the level of activity varies a lot. Sometimes they

13 Direct translation, transcript of interview 5 question 14 see appendix 14 Direct translation, transcript of interview 5 question 14 see appendix

have little to do and sometimes they have more than plenty to do, the respondents especially emphasize Fridays as a day with high workload. However even though some of the respondents mentions that they have a lot to do in their work they also say that they like the long shifts better and that they like when there is much to do because they feel the time to be shorter.

To get the things done in the job, job resources are important. Job resources have three different levels: the task level, the inter-personal level and the supervisory level. Feedback at all levels was one of the themes in the interviews that I identified as an issue. At the task level the employees receive performance feedback, however this kind of feedback is very fluctuating within Madkompagniet. One respondent answers no to question 15 about receiving praise and encouragement, she says:

“No, but you don’t get criticized unless you do something wrong. In some kind of way that is a kind of praise15”

By this she implies that no news is good news. Other respondents say that they feel like the managers are good at sharing performance feedback and letting the employees know in the situation if they have done a good job or less of a good job. One respondent answers question 15 exact opposite of the above respondent. She says:

“…I believe that we are good at letting each other know that we have done a good job16”

The responses to question 15 varies a lot as mentioned before, some employees implies that the leaders are good at giving performance feedback, some says that it does not happen that often and some says that it never happens during working hours. This can represent an issue but the employees do not indicate it to be a problem. One mentions that it would be nice with response on a regular basis but not that it is an issue that they do not get it. This is another example of people perceive things differently. Job resources on all levels are important for

engagement. To further elaborate on feedback I am going to look at the inter-personal level. This level includes support from their colleagues. As mentioned earlier in my analysis, all of the employees emphasize the good relationships that they have with their colleagues. To question 14 about if they believe that their colleagues perform well when they are at work most of the respondents say that they do feel like all perform to their best abilities. One respondent also mentions that the staffs is good at letting each other know that they have done a good job as a team. The employees mentions open communication and that the staffs are not afraid of opening their mouth if something is not done right. One says that:

“There has to be room for both criticism and praise. You have to be able to take this, we have to be able to work with it if there are some negative things17”

The open communication and the good internal relationship among the employees indicates that the support among the colleagues are good, but only some of the respondents says anything specific about support from their colleagues. They mention friendships, good teamwork and responsibilities towards each other, this to me, indicate that they do support each other but the verbal expressions of their support vary a lot.

To measure the job resources on the organizational level, which include supervisory responses and coaching I used question 18 and 19. They ask about responses on development during the last 6 months and the possibilities for development within the workplace. To question 18 about personal feedback on development all respondents answers that they have not received specific individual supervisory responses. This is a lack in job resources and can harm the engagement at the workplace if we lean towards the conclusions of the theory. Some of the responses mention that they would like to have individual meetings to know if they are performing okay, and if they have developed themselves in a positive manner. One respondent says:

“ …it is hard to cease the moment and talk about the individual employee18”

17 Direct translation, transcript of interview 4 question 15 see appendix 18 Direct translation, transcript of interview 4 question 18

Furthermore the employees also express that there is not that much room for development. The younger girls especially talks about having been at the workplace for a longer period of time, and that the longer they have been there the harder it is to learn more. They imply that when they have learned the different processes and are familiar with the different workstations they find it hard to develop from there. Madkompagniet have no learning or development initiatives, this can harm engagement in the way that employees can become undedicated due to lack of prospects. However even though they feel like the possibilities for learning and development are small they all say that they feel challenged in their work situation. They mainly feel challenged due to variation in workload, customers and time. Feeling challenged might be able to compensate for the lack of prospect but in line with the theory lack of prospect, feedback and learning can seriously damage engagement at the workplace. I have however already concluded that the employees indicate that they are more or less engaged so in this case the lack of job resources cannot be crucial for engagement.

This section has compared the empirical data to the theories to underpin which antecedents are present at Madkompagniet and which are not. I found that many antecedents are indeed present but I also found that within job resources that there are some deficiencies that can harm engagement. However the section does not explain why these antecedents lead to engagement. Why do the employees of Madkompagniet react to these antecedents by being engaged? This question will I answer by the use of social exchange theory.

6.2.3 Social exchange This framework discusses the psychological conditions for engagement. It explains why the individuals respond to the antecedents and why engagement occurs (Saks 2006) Social exchange theory treats relationships as the reason for engagement. The relationships evolve over time into trusting, loyal and mutual commitments as long as the individuals act along with the rules of exchange. Besides that this theory also consist of the fundamental idea of resource exchange and two-way transactions (Cropanzano & Mitchell 2005).

Social exchange theory is divided into rule sets, in my research I have chosen only to focus on the rules of reciprocity and the rules of negotiation. The first is where an action by one party

leads to a response by another party. As concluded above Madkompagniet’s employees work in a culture, where there is trust, fairness and safety. Individuals are different and they perceive things differently but one thing they all mentions are the good relationships they have within the organisation both with their colleagues but also with their bosses both at the workplace and in private settings. This relationship between the organisation and the employees is very important for engagement. Derived from the above the employees get a good social culture, trust, they get fairness and safety and they get a job where the demand is manageable and job resources are more or less present. In return they give the organisation their commitment. A good example of this is one respondents saying:

“In the beginning it was only a place where I worked. Now you really want it to go well for the organisation because you know what lies behind the organisation. …it is a place where you really want to do a good effort to make it all go well19”

This statement is a clear example of a psychological contract where the employee feel responsible towards the organisation in return for having a good culture, manageable job demands, job resources and so on. Good relationships give effective work behaviour and positive employee attitudes, which are very important in frontline work because it is exhausting to portray an emotion that one does not feel. Therefore it is important to have frontline workers with good attitudes. Having good relationships also cause individuals to become committed and engaged (Cropanzano & Mitchell 2005). Madkompaniet are indeed committed. They claim themselves that they like to be at the workplace and that they want to perform well because they want it to go well for the organisation.

Reader might notice that pay has not been mentioned. The second rule set about negotiation is more explicit. These rules often apply to economic transactions regarding for an example salary or tangible rewards. As one respondent expresses it:

“It does not pay that much moneywise20”

The employees do not receive high salary and they do not receive overtime rates or bonuses however they still love working at Madkompagniet. One respondent told me a story about being offered a higher salary at another workplace, but she did not want to change work place because:

“…I do not like to work alone I am really happy to have people around me at my work place and I like that I feel so awesome here (Madkompagniet)21”

This implies that the rules of reciprocity are more important that the rules of negotiation. The employees of Madkompagniet do not feel any need to negotiate because they feel that the other aspects of the job are so good, that they do not even want to change their job for a higher wage. This and the other aspect of the organisational culture show us that in return for trust, fairness and safety and matches in the six areas of worklife manageable work demand and more or less present job resources the employee gives Madkompagniet their vigor, dedication and absorption and thereby their engagement. The theory (Gail 2012; Bakker & Leiter 2012) states that engagement leads to good work performance therefore the engaged employees also return the good internal culture and relationships by performing well and putting in a good effort.

7. Findings By coding the data collected through the interviews in section 6.1 I found patterns and common themes. These themes that the employees emphasised were: satisfaction, energy, responsibility, good social environment, open communication and the perception of time flying by quickly. These indicate that the employees of Madkompagniet are engaged, however it is hard to conclude whether or not a person is engaged and to what degree they are engaged. Therefore I include section 6.2: an analysis of the organisational culture to get closer to specify the things that influences engagement and to include a different theoretical approach to the case. The purpose of my analysis was not to conclude if the employees are indeed engaged, the purpose was to find out which factors influences engagement within a service organisation. I uncovered several factors that influences engagement within this case: social relations, communication, trust, responsibilities, fairness and so on. What appeared

from my research to be the most dominating factor was the social aspect of the job. All respondents put a lot of emphasize on this factor and indicated that this is one of the major reasons to why they dedicate themselves to their job. This founding is not portrayed in any of the theoretical frameworks. Some have communication, support from colleagues and two-way relationships included in the theory, which relates to the social aspect of the job, but no framework uses the whole social aspect of the job as antecedents for engagement, not to the extent, which my case shows that it is important.

The last section of analysis is included to explain why the employees respond to the antecedents by becoming engaged, they respond to the antecedents by becoming engaged due to the rules of reciprocity. However the most significant finding in my analysis was to uncover the social aspect of the job to be the most dominating factor of engagement to the employees of Madkompagniet. This founding does not fit into the theoretical framework. It is difficult and misleading to put individuals into frameworks this and more I will discuss in the next section.

8. Discussion What is important to notice from this analysis is that, employees are individuals. They perceive things differently and they react differently to different things. People are different in general; one has to remember this also from the viewpoint of hermeneutics. People do not always act according to theory. Therefore it can be hard to relate the theory precisely, and to approach the case by using just one theory. This appeared to be the case with my case study because the overall themes in the analysis did match the theory, but when I started to clarify the antecedents another picture emerged. Most scholars include very specific antecedents in their theory the issue with this is, that people are indeed individuals as mentioned before. They do not match within a curtain theoretical framework. Actually my research showed that this case of employees at Madkompagniet, did not fit correctly into any of my chosen frameworks. The case showed similarities to the theory but did not fit within only one framework. To look at employees as individuals are interesting and my case is a good example of social studies. People cannot be put into frameworks due to individualism.

From my interviews with the employees at Madkompagniet I found that all the employees expressed themselves in different ways and I got especially very different answers to the

questions about feedback and praise. The employees perceive the amount of praise differently and the ways of getting it and feedback on their performance differently. This shows me that individuals are indeed hard to analyse and indicated to me that it would be hard to specify the factors that influences engagement due to individualism. Some factors are very important for some, while others are less important. This can make it hard to approach the concept engagement in real life. In theory it can be black and white. Many scholars have conceptualized it so much that it does make sense to talk about engaged or disengaged employees but in real life one cannot really conclude if the employees are engaged or to what degree they are engaged.

What previous research has shown is that many things influence engagement and many scholars indicate that more than one antecedent have to be present to have engagement. Schaufeli includes vigor, dedication and absorption; engagement culture includes trust, fairness and safety. What my research showed was that some things influence engagement more than others and that it can be different from person to person, which factors that are significant. What I also found is that one factor can be more dominant than others. However the finding that one factor can be so dominating that it can cause engagement does not match into the theoretical frameworks. No scholar emphasizes one factor to the extent that it matches my findings. My research indicate that one factor if it is dominant enough can influence engagement alone and overshadow other antecedents and even issues to the extent where they become less important.

In this case the dominant factor is the social aspect of the job. Tangible rewards like salary, feedback on a regular basis, possibility for further learning and development within the organisation is not that important to the employees because they feel social wellbeing on the job. The staff all perceived rewards, recognition and praise very differently. However they all indicated that they are more or less engaged and that it is due to their social well being within the workplace and with regard to the good relationship with fellow colleagues and good relationship with the bosses. The analysis indicates that the factors that are present at Madkompagniet are all factors that are related to the social aspect of the job. This tells me that one factor is enough to influence engagement significant. To cause engagement the factor just has to be overshadowing enough.

I could have chosen to investigate all of this by using a quantitative approach with multiple cases to see if I could find a general pattern, however this would change my whole approach and viewpoint of this paper. I believe that when investigating social studies in real life a qualitative approach is the right way to go with the viewpoint of hermeneutics, I believe this because of individualism. A qualitative paper gives a more holistic picture of the case than a quantitative method would have done. The feelings and perceptions of the employees are taking into account in a qualitative paper in contrast to a quantitative paper. This single case study shows us a very unique picture of an organisation where the social environment is very good and is very dominating in relation to work engagement. The case shows us the different aspects of the human side of the organisation: the emotions, the interactions and the personalities of the employees. I find that a qualitative research approach gives the best picture of the human side of the organisation in stet of the ‘number’ side of the organisation. However when having chosen a qualitative method of research I cannot generalize the findings to other cases of other organisations. I emphasize individualism in the beginning of this discussion and I do so because it is a very individual case. It is a closed organisation with individuals as employees and a Theory Y management that believes in the individual employee therefore I cannot generalise my findings to other research papers or other cases. This case is an individual one with individual findings. To finish of my paper I will end with a conclusive section.

9. Conclusion The findings and the discussion elaborate on the analysis but to sum up the whole paper I include this conclusive section. Engagement occurs when curtain antecedents are present. The scholars more or less agree on the definition of engagement, but they express themselves differently. What varies is the antecedents that they believe are necessary to have engagement. In my research I chose to use the definition by Schaufeli to investigate if engagement is present at Madkompagniet. To further elaborate on this I chose to include the antecedents from Engagement Culture, The Job Demand and The job Resource Model and The Six Areas of Worklife, I did this due to the fact that my case is a real life case and that people are individuals. Using a single framework would have been limiting for my case, therefore I included more theoretical frameworks to broaden my research. My findings confirm that I

could not have used only one framework; a real-life case cannot be explained by the work of only one single scholar. What I found was that my case does not fit into any of the chosen frameworks completely but by the use of the antecedents from the different frameworks, which are explained in section 2 I could relate different aspects of the theories to the case to make a more coherent and holistic picture of the case.

My finding is that the employees of Madkompagniet indicate that they are all more or less engaged. However it is misleading to conclude whether or not the employees are engaged and to what degree they are engaged. Due to my methodological framework with a qualitative research approach it would be hard to make a specific statement about engagement at Madkompagniet. However the respondents did indicate that they are engaged, they all expressed several things that indicate engagement. They express vigor, dedication and absorption, which are included in Schafeli’s definition of engagement. What is more important is the influence that the antecedents from the different frameworks have on engagement. I found that many of the antecedents are present at Madkompagniet in varies degrees. This indicates that they do lead to engagement. The factors that were most dominating in this case where the ones that are related to the social aspects of the workplace and the relationships with the management. The employees expressed that they feel like they have a trusting relationship with both the management and their colleagues. This trust leads to responsibilities, which the employees feel are rewarding. The employees also indicate that they work in a fair and safe culture with a flat organisation where everybody gets treated equal. None of the respondents expresses symptoms of stress or overload of workload. They generally like working at Madkompagniet even though frontline jobs, as the ones in Madkompagniet are both psychologically demanding and physical demanding. Furthermore they emphasize the relationship with colleagues a lot. All the respondents say that they enjoy working with one another and that this is one of the mayor reasons that they enjoy working at Madkompagniet.

One issue I found during my analysis of engagement at Madkompagniet was that job resources are lacking. Madkompagniet does not have any kind of reward system or feedback system. When I interviewed the employees the answers to the questions about praise and support varied a lot. Some felt that they got plenty of praise from the management and

support from colleagues while others did not feel like they received any. This is a matter of perception. As discussed above people are individuals and perceive things differently thus some employees need more praise than others to feel it. What was really interesting about this finding was that even though job resources are lacking it does not seem to influence the employees. They express that there is a lack of it but they do not indicate that it is an issue for them. Some say that they would like yearly or half yearly feedback but no one emphasize it to the extent that is seems like an issue.

The last section of my analysis explains why the antecedents that I use in my analysis influence engagement. This can be hard to comprehend but one of the theories that can explain why people act the way they do with regard to the antecedents are social exchange theory. This explains some basic rule sets to why people act the way they do. In this case I found that the rules of reciprocity are very important. They are related to the good relationships that the employees indicate that they have with each other and with the management. They believe that they have an psychological contract where they feel responsible towards the organisation and in return they get a good culture, trusting management, manageable job demands and so on. This psychological contract is the reason why the antecedents influence engagement.

Most of my findings relate to the social aspect of the workplace. Many of the various antecedents are present at Madkompagniet but what is most interesting is that the social aspect of the work place is the factor that is emphasized the most, it is the most domination influencer of engagement in this case. This does not fit into any of the frameworks. This is a single individual case where the social aspect of the workplace is the most significant factor that influences engagement. No scholar has emphasized this factor to the extent that it has in my case. Therefore I cannot relate it to the theory completely or generalise it to other cases. What my research showed was that some things influence engagement more than others and that it can be different from person to person, which factors that are significant. What I also found is that one factor can be more dominant than others. Furthermore my research indicate that one factor if it is dominant enough, can influence engagement alone and overshadow other antecedents and even issues to the extent where they become less important. My findings are that real life cases of social sciences are outstanding because of the human side of

the case. People are individuals therefore when analysing human behaviour different patterns will emerge. Individualism is the reason I cannot conclude whether or not the employees are engaged, however I have stated some of the factors that influence engagement and why they do so.

10. References

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10. Appendix

Appendix 1 Gallup’s Q12

Appendix 2 UWES

Appendix 3 Interview guide

Interviewguide til dybde interview.

Interviewet udført af: Cecilie Brock Jensen Interview person: Anonym Dato for interview: 10.04.2013

Jeg, Cecilie Brock Jensen fortager dette interview for at få indsigt i engagementet på arbejdspladsen Madkompagniets og indsigt i hvilke ting der er til stede som forudsætter engagement. Interviewet tager ca. et kvarter og svarende vil udelukkende blive anvendt til min Bachelor opgave og vil ikke blive distribueret videre. Interviewet vil blive optaget med godkendelse af interview personen på et lydbånd.

Indledende spørgsmål Hvad er din alder? Hvor lang tid har du arbejdet ved Madkompagniet? Hvor mange timer arbejder du i gennemsnit om ugen hos Madkompagniet?

Engagement? Følelser omkring arbejdet 1. Hvordan har du det når du arbejder? Energisk, træt, ugidelig, begejstret, ked af det osv? Giv eksempel? 2. Hvilken mening føler du dette job giver for dig? Penge, socialisering, selvtillid? 3. Inspirere det her job dig til ting i din hverdag og andre aspekter i dit liv? Hvilke, giv eksempler? 4. Er du stolt af at arbejde på Madkompagniet? Hvorfor? 5. Føler du at du bliver udfordret i dit job? Hvilke udfordringer, giv eksempel? 6. Holder du ud selvom tingene ikke altid går som de skal? Føler du dig skrøbelig eller ukuelig på jobbet? Giv eksempel

Tidsfornemmelsen på arbejde 7. Hvordan føler du tiden går når du er på arbejde? Giv eksempel? Flyver tiden af sted, står den stille, eller går den helt normalt 8. Har du lyst til at tage på arbejde om morgenen eller når du skal møde? 9. Har du det bedst når der er meget at lave eller lidt at lave? 10. Hvad betyder længden af en vagt for dig? Hvorfor?

Forudsætninger for engagement? Forventninger til arbejdet 11. Ved du hvad der bliver forventet af dig når du møder? 12. Har du mulighed for at udføre de opgaver som du er bedst til? 13. Har du tingene du skal bruge for at udføre dit arbejde? Hvis ikke, hvad gør det ved din arbejdssituation? 14. Gør dine kollegaer deres indsats når de er på arbejde?

Opbakning 15. Modtager du ros og opmuntring for din arbejdsindsats af dine kollegaer og chefer? Giv eksempel? 16. Synes du dine arbejdsgivere interessere sig for dig som person og giver dig tilstrækkelig opmærksomhed? eksempler 17. Høre dine arbejdsgivere og kollegaer efter når du ytre dine meninger og ideer? 18. Taler i omkring jeres udvikling? Har nogen givet dig respons på din udvikling de sidste 6 måneder? 19. Har du mulighed for at udvikle dig og lære i din arbejdsstilling? Giv eksempel

Forandringer 20. Føler du at dine følelser for madkompagniet har ændret sig i den tid du har arbejdet for madkompagniet? Positiv, negativ? 21. Overvejer du at skifte arbejdsplads ? Hvorfor, hvorfor ikke? 22. Har du oplevet stress eller en anden form for arbejdsrelateret nedbrud? 23. Hvordan har din tilfredshedsfornemmelse udviklet sig igennem din arbejdstid? Er du blevet mere og mere tilfreds eller omvendt?

Er der noget andet du vil tilføje?

Tusind tak for dit bidrag! :)

Appendix 4 transcript of interview 1

Interview af interview person 1

Indledende spørgsmål Hvad er din alder? 17 år

Hvor lang tid har du arbejdet ved Madkompagniet? 1,5 år

Hvor mange timer arbejder du i gennemsnit om ugen hos Madkompagniet? 5 timer

Engagement? Følelser omkring arbejdet 1. Hvordan har du det når du arbejder? Ohm, måske er man lidt træt når man kommer men så snart man kommer i gang med arbejdet glemmer man at man er træt og så har man rimelig meget energi, det afhænger os af hvor gang i den der er på arbejdet

2. Hvilken mening føler du dette job giver for dig? Det giver mig at jeg er mere selvstændig og jeg godt kan lide at tjene mine egne penge, fordi så føler jeg at jeg mere har fortjent de ting jeg køber og så er det og så rart at kunne sige at man har et arbejde. (”giver dette specifik job mening for dig”)… Ja

3. Inspirere det her job dig til ting i din hverdag og andre aspekter i dit liv? Ja, man lære jo helt vildt meget når man har sådan et arbejde her, om mad og hvordan man arbejder effektiv og sådan noget. Så f.eks. hvis mine venner er helt blanke på det område kan jeg godt være rigtig glad for at jeg kan de her ting for det er ting jeg synes man tit bruger i hverdagen.

4. Er du stolt af at arbejde på Madkompagniet? Hvorfor? Ja, jeg synes det er mega fedt at have sådan et arbejde her os fordi vi har så meget ansvar som vi har på vores arbejde og det kan jeg godt lide og så at fortælle andre om.

5. Føler du at du bliver udfordret i dit job? Jeg føler mig udfordret ved at det ikke er al ting jeg kan finde ud af her nede så jeg lære hele tiden af mine chefer og kollegager. Feks. Om fredagen når der er rigtig travlt føler jeg mig udfordret fordi man skal have styr på rigtig mange ting på samme tid. Det kræver at man ligger strategier for en selv så man ikke glemmer ting eller glemmer en ordre.

6. Holder du ud selvom tingene ikke altid går som de skal? Ja, jeg holder ud fordi jeg ved der kommer et break hvor tingene løsner op igen og så ved man at man skal klø på og knokle og selvom man måske laver en fejl gør det bare en mere opmærksom på at man måske skal være lidt mere koncentreret end man var. Så derfor holder jeg helt klar ud.

Tidsfornemmelsen på arbejde 7. Hvordan føler du tiden går når du er på arbejde? Som regel føler jeg at tiden flyver af sted, der kan være enkelte tirsdage eller onsdage hvor tiden føles lidt langsomt fordi der ikke har været så meget at lave. Men f.eks. efter vi har fået længere åben er der altid noget at lave og så føler jeg at tiden går sindssyg hurtigt.

8. Har du lyst til at tage på arbejde om morgenen eller når du skal møde? Som regel, nogen gange kan man godt tænke at jeg gider simpelthen ikke i dag fordi man føler sig træt efter en skole dag men som jeg sagde før så når man kommer her ned får man automatisk god energi og man har nogle gode kollegaer som man kan snakke med og så plejer man at vågne op og være klar.

9. Har du det bedst når der er meget at lave eller lidt at lave? Jeg vil helst have at der er meget at lave.

10. Hvad betyder længden af en vagt for dig? Hvorfor? Jeg vil helst have en lang vagt fordi tiden går ret hurtigt, så hvis man har en kort vagt så skal man alligevel hjem og i bad og man kan måske synes man kunne havde brugt tiden på noget andet.

Forudsætninger for engagement? Forventninger til arbejdet 11. Ved du hvad der bliver forventet af dig når du møder? Ja, det ved jeg fordi vi har personale møder hvor vores chefer gør det klart hvad der er forventet af os og vi får os af vide hvis der er noget der ikke er godt nok og hvis der er noget der skal strammes op på så jeg ved hvad cheferne har af forventninger til deres medarbejdere.

12. Har du mulighed for at udføre de opgaver som du er bedst til? Ja.

13. Har du tingene du skal bruge for at udføre dit arbejde? Hvis ikke, hvad gør det ved din arbejdssituation? Vi har som regel alt ting, hvis der er noget vi mangler kan det være plads. F.eks fredag aften kan det godt gøre en lidt stresset hvis man f.eks. ikke kan finde plads til at skære en kage ud og det så begynder at flyde hvis der ikke er plads og så roder der meget hvis der bliver fyldt op over det hele.

14. Gør dine kollegaer deres indsats når de er på arbejde? Ja, det føler jeg som regel det er ikke ret tit jeg føler at de ikke gør deres bedste.

Opbakning 15. Modtager du ros og opmuntring for din arbejdsindsats af dine kollegaer og chefer? Ja men ikke så meget i arbejdstiden der går vi ikke lige og roser hinanden hele tiden der går vi jo og arbejder men f.eks. når mine forældre er her nede plejer mine chefer altid at snakke sødt om mig til mine forældre så jeg tror da de er nogenlunde tilfredse.

16. Synes du dine arbejdsgivere interessere sig for dig som person og giver dig tilstrækkelig opmærksomhed? Ja det synes jeg fordi de kender mig rigtig godt og der er mange der kender hinanden. Mine chefer kender også min familie og så spørger de altid indtil den og spørger hvordan det går.

17. Høre dine arbejdsgivere og kollegaer efter når du ytre dine meninger og ideer? Ja. Det synes jeg de gør. Når vi er til personale møder så de piger der er her nede er ikke sådan nogle piger som bare holder mund så jeg synes altid at tingene bliver sagt og at cheferne tager det til sig det er selvfølgelig ikke altid der bliver gjort noget ved det for det kan godt være de ikke giver en ret men der bliver lyttet til hvad vi siger

18. Taler i omkring jeres udvikling? Har nogen givet dig respons på din udvikling de sidste 6 måneder? Nej det synes jeg faktisk ikke rigtig der er, jeg kunne godt tænke mig der var noget mere af det. Det kunne rart at vide hvordan man står og hvordan de(cheferne) synes det går med en.

19. Har du mulighed for at udvikle dig og lære i din arbejdsstilling? Ja altså det kan jeg jo se at jeg har jeg kan flere og flere ting af mig selv jo længere tid jeg har været her så det er klart at jeg har udviklet mig der kommer selvfølgelig et punkt hvor man kan de fleste ting og så er det svært at blive ved med at udvikle sig men lige nu synes jeg stadig jeg kan udvikle mig og jeg synes os at jeg gør det.

Forandringer 20. Føler du at dine følelser for Madkompagniet har ændret sig i den tid du har arbejdet for Madkompagniet? Jeg synes kun det har været positiv hele vejen igennem jeg synes ikke rigtig at det her ændret sig.

21. Overvejer du at skifte arbejdsplads ? Hvorfor, hvorfor ikke? Det overvejer jeg overhoved ikke fordi jeg synes at jeg har rigtig nemt ved at komme her, det ligger rigtig tæt på mit hus og arbejdstiden er meget fleksible så man kan komme når man har fri og mine kollegaer er.. man kunne nok ikke finde ret meget bedre kollegaer og så fordi mange af mine venner er her. Det synes jeg gør at det bliver meget mere hyggeligt og rart at være på arbejde.

22. Har du oplevet stress eller en anden form for arbejdsrelateret nedbrud? Nej

23. Hvordan har din tilfredshedsfornemmelse udviklet sig igennem din arbejdstid? Er du blevet mere og mere tilfreds eller omvendt? Jeg er nok blevet mere og mere tilfreds ikke fordi jeg nogensinde har været utilfreds men fordi man kan flere og flere ting selvstændigt så bliver man også mere tilfreds med sin egen indsats.

Er der noget andet du vil tilføje? Jeg synes at alle ligger meget engagement i deres arbejde alle har et ansvar for at der bliver serveret god mad og der er ingen der kunne finde på at sende dårlig mad ud af køkkenet så vil de hellere lave noget nyt så på den måde har alle en forpligtelse for at det gode ry bliver opretholdt.

Hvor lang tid har du arbejdet ved Madkompagniet? 4 år

Hvor mange timer arbejder du i gennemsnit om ugen hos Madkompagniet? 8 timer

Engagement? Følelser omkring arbejdet 1. Hvordan har du det når du arbejder? Jeg har det godt jeg føler mig godt tilpas her nede og jeg føler at jeg bliver glad af at være her.

2. Hvilken mening føler du dette job giver for dig? Man har her selvfølgelig også for pengenes skyld men jeg synes og så at det er rart at være her nede fordi vi har det så godt sammen alle pigerne og at vi kan sammen og der er ikke er så meget pige-fnider alle har det godt sammen og alle kan sammen. Jeg synes det er rart at kunne lave mad og lære alt mulig om mad og hygiejne og lære at bruge det i ens hverdag.

3. Inspirere det her job dig til ting i din hverdag og andre aspekter i dit liv? Ja altså det gør at man bliver mere udadvendt og åben og man lære at f.eks. på jobbet når der nogen gange kommer en sur kunde ind så er man nogen gange nød til at bare at

smile og at kunden altid har ret og det gør nogen gange at man bare kan ryste på hoved af folk , det lære man også på den måde.

4. Er du stolt af at arbejde på Madkompagniet? Hvorfor? Ja meget, det er et fedt job, i forhold til nogle af mine veninder der bare har lorte job hvor de skal alt mulig kedeligt er jeg i hvert fald glad for mit job det er både spændende og udfordrende.

5. Føler du at du bliver udfordret i dit job? Ja jeg føler at jeg bliver udfordret fordi de giver os alle sammen så meget ansvar og vi får lov til.. der er ikke nogen der arbejder mere end andre eller laver andet end de andre, der er ikke nogen der er opdelt her nede, der er ikke noget hierarki derfor får alle lov til at flytte rundt(i virksomheden) der er ikke kun en der står i opvasken hvilket og så gør at arbejdet ikke bliver så kedeligt.

6. Holder du ud selvom tingene ikke altid går som de skal? Altså det er en arbejdsplads hvor der er så meget fart på hele tiden at man ved godt med sig selv at man bliver nød til at hægte op i sig selv hvis man ikke er i så godt humør så er der bare ikke noget at gøre man bliver nød til at lægge det væk og arbejde. Det er egentligt også nemt at gøre fordi der sker så meget her nede.

Tidsfornemmelsen på arbejde 7. Hvordan føler du tiden går når du er på arbejde? Altså oftest går tiden helt vildt stærkt fordi der er noget at lave men nogen gange hvis der overhoved ikke er noget at lave kan tiden godt gå lidt langsomt.

8. Har du lyst til at tage på arbejde om morgenen eller når du skal møde? Ja, jeg synes det er hyggeligt at komme på arbejde og nogen gange hvis man bare er der hjemme har man lyst til bare lige at gå forbi og sige hej fordi det altid er rart at komme her og man har det godt med sine kollegaer. Der er en god stemning her nede.

9. Har du det bedst når der er meget at lave eller lidt at lave? Det er altid sjovest når der er meget at lave så går tiden os lidt stærkere så sker der lidt.

10. Hvad betyder længden af en vagt for dig? Hvorfor? Ja det betyder noget, jeg kan bedst lide at være her på de lange vagter for så føler man ligesom at man får noget ud af det, hvis man er her sådan kort.. altså ja man får bare mere ud af det når man er her længere tid.

Forudsætninger for engagement? Forventninger til arbejdet 11. Ved du hvad der bliver forventet af dig når du møder? Ja altså nu har jeg været her i så lang tid at jeg ved godt hvad mine chefer forventer af mig og vi har os personale møde og der er nogle høje forventninger til os alle sammen som vi selvfølgelig gerne vil leve op til.

12. Har du mulighed for at udføre de opgaver som du er bedst til?

Ja det er tit hvor at jeg får lov til at lave det jeg gerne vil og der er mulighed for at sige om jeg ikke må lave det og det fordi hvis man godt kan lide det, det synes jeg er rart.

13. Har du tingene du skal bruge for at udføre dit arbejde? Hvis ikke, hvad gør det ved din arbejdssituation? Altså ja jeg synes jeg har de ting jeg skal bruge for at være her nede jeg er godt inde i det hele. (fysiske ting) jeg synes ikke der mangler noget og hvis jeg synes der mangler noget synes jeg cheferne er gode til at få handlet ind hvis der er nogle kvive f.eks. der ikke er gode nok .

14. Gør dine kollegaer deres indsats når de er på arbejde? Ja helt sikkert vi ved alle sammen hvad det kræver at være her og vi er alle klar på at være omstillings parate fordi der lige pludselig kan blive vildt travlt og alle er villige til at yde det der skal til for at det hele er som det skal være

Opbakning 15. Modtager du ros og opmuntring for din arbejdsindsats af dine kollegaer og chefer? Ja jeg synes at mine chefer er er gode til at fortælle/forklare når der er noget som vi gør godt og når der er noget der måske ikke er godt nok. Så det synes jeg helt sikkert. (kollegaer) jeg synes vi er gode til at rose hinanden f.eks. hvis vi er her en aften hvor der er helt vildt travlt og vi har meget at lave og at der er stress på så synes jeg at vi er gode til at sige til hinanden at det her det klarede vi fanme godt det her.

16. Synes du dine arbejdsgivere interessere sig for dig som person og giver dig tilstrækkelig opmærksomhed? Ja helt sikkert, hvis de kan se at vi er kede af det er de gode til at spørge ind til os og til at interessere sig for os hvordan vi har det udover arbejdet.

17. Høre dine arbejdsgivere og kollegaer efter når du ytre dine meninger og ideer? Ja det synes jeg os f.eks. inden vi har personale møder så skriver vi tit op alle os piger hvis vi synes der er nogle ting som skal være anderledes eller ting vi ikke forstår så skriver vi det op i en bog og så altid når vi har personale møder så får vi altid lov til at fortælle hvis vi synes der er noget vi der skal ændres.

18. Taler i omkring jeres udvikling? Har nogen givet dig respons på din udvikling de sidste 6 måneder? Nej ikke sådan direkte. Jeg tror bare jeg tænker at når de ikke siger noget så tænker jeg vel bare at det nok går fint nok.

19. Har du mulighed for at udvikle dig og lære i din arbejdsstilling? Ja, vi får lov til at lukke selv og vi får lov til… altså at de stoler på os og tror på at vi kan gøre det og gøre tingene godt nok og hvis der er nogle buffeter at vi får lov til at lave salater uden at de hele tiden skal tjekke os og at de tror på at vi godt kan, det får jeg i hvert fald meget ud af at man ikke føler at der står en i nakken af en og at man føler at de tror på at det vi laver er godt nok.

Forandringer

20. Føler du at dine følelser for Madkompagniet har ændret sig i den tid du har arbejdet for Madkompagniet? Jeg er rigtig glad, det har jeg sådan set altid været. Jeg kan rigtig godt lide at være her og jeg synes at det er rart at der er mange af mine veninder der er her og at det er rigtig hyggeligt at komme på arbejde.

21. Overvejer du at skifte arbejdsplads ? Hvorfor, hvorfor ikke? Nej det gør jeg ikke på nuværende tidspunkt. Jeg kan godt lide at være her og det er nemt for mig at komme her hen og ja jeg kunne ikke rigtig forestille mig at være et andet sted lige nu.

22. Har du oplevet stress eller en anden form for arbejdsrelateret nedbrud? nej, altså nogen gange har jeg måske hvis jeg har haft problemer uden for arbejdet så har det da godt nogen gange kunnet være sådan lidt.. altså at man ikke har kunnet overskue at komme på arbejde men så synes jeg også at de har været gode til at hjælpe en og så sige at så får man måske lidt færre timer eller sådan noget i den stil.

23. Hvordan har din tilfredshedsfornemmelse udviklet sig igennem din arbejdstid? Er du blevet mere og mere tilfreds eller omvendt? Altså jeg er blevet mere tilfreds på den måde at jeg er blevet bedre til tingene og at jeg har fået mere styr på tingene men den måde jeg har haft det på Madkompagniet har bare altid været god.

Er der noget andet du vil tilføje? Nej.

Hvor lang tid har du arbejdet ved Madkompagniet? Ca. 1 år

Hvor mange timer arbejder du i gennemsnit om ugen hos Madkompagniet? 6-7 timer

Engagement? Følelser omkring arbejdet

1. Hvordan har du det når du arbejder? Jeg kan helt vildt godt lide at være på arbejde. Fordi jeg syntes folk her nede er rigtig søde og så synes jeg og så at det er et sjovt arbejde. Jeg synes for det meste at jeg er glad når jeg er her nede.

2. Hvilken mening føler du dette job giver for dig? Altså jeg tror ikke at det er noget som jeg har tænkt mig at være i fremtiden, men jeg synes da at det er meget rart at kunne nogle køkkenting i et køkken.

3. Inspirere det her job dig til ting i din hverdag og andre aspekter i dit liv? Ja på nogle punkter kan det godt. For eksempel at noget af det mad man laver her nede kunne man for eksempel og så godt lave der hjemme og jeg ved ikke om man kan sige det sådan at det inspirere men at mange af ens kollegaer os er her nede at det måske, ja jeg ved ikke hvordan det inspirere men det er i hvert fald meget rart.

4. Er du stolt af at arbejde på Madkompagniet? Hvorfor? Ja det er jeg. Altså jeg synes virkelig at det er en god arbejdsplads så derfor taler jeg selvfølgelig og så positivt om det når jeg taler til folk om det.

5. Føler du at du bliver udfordret i dit job? Det er tit hvis man er her nede og det er rigtig travlt så synes jeg godt at det kan være en udfordring at få det hele til sådan at… huske det hele og nå det hele. Så på den måde kan jeg godt føle at der er nogle udfordringer noglegange.

6. Holder du ud selvom tingene ikke altid går som de skal? Ja jeg synes at hvis der sker nogle fejl eller et eller andet så synes jeg altid at vi finder ud af det på en ordentlig måde og får løst det igen. Jeg synes det er en del af arbejdet det er jo et køkken man står i og man kan jo ikke altid lave alting helt perfekt. Så der vil jo være nogle ting der ikke lige lykkes og sådan er det jo bare.

Tidsfornemmelsen på arbejde 7. Hvordan føler du tiden går når du er på arbejde? Det synes jeg er lidt forskelligt alt efter hvornår man sådan er her, men for det meste synes jeg faktisk at den går rigtig hurtig os fordi man tit laver noget forskelligt og der tit er travlt her nede. Så jeg synes egentlig at det går forholdsvis hurtig

8. Har du lyst til at tage på arbejde om morgenen eller når du skal møde? Ja det har jeg. Der kan selvfølgelig være nogle dage hvor man er lidt træt og sådan noget og man måske hellere vil ligge i sin seng men jeg synes at for det meste har jeg lyst til at komme på arbejde. Og når jeg er her nede så synes jeg altid at det er fedt at være her

9. Har du det bedst når der er meget at lave eller lidt at lave? Jeg kan faktisk bedst lide at være her nede når der sådan, når der er rimelig meget at lave for så synes jeg tiden går hurtigere når man sådan hele tiden har noget at lave. Så det kan jeg egentlig bedst lide. Men det kan altså os godt, selvfølgelig os godt blive lidt for meget hvis der er alt for meget og helt stresset men for det meste kan jeg bedst lide når der er noget at lave.

10. Hvad betyder længden af en vagt for dig? Hvorfor? Jah det gør den da lidt nogen gange altså jeg synes måske, egentlig kan jeg godt lide nogle lidt længere vagter at det ikke bare er sådan 2 timer. For så synes jeg ikke rigtig man når at komme ind i det ordentligt og det måske er lidt, lidt tid at være her nede i af gangen. Så lidt gør det men det er ikke sådan at jeg kan os godt være her nede et par timer hvis det er det. (fortrækker du de lange vagter?) ja det gør jeg.

Forudsætninger for engagement? Forventninger til arbejdet 11. Ved du hvad der bliver forventet af dig når du møder? Ja altså der forventes selvfølgelig sådan at man har styr på tingene og at det man laver det er i orden og at man ikke bare tuller rundt og laver alt mulig andet. Så det synes jeg egentlig godt.

12. Har du mulighed for at udføre de opgaver som du er bedst til? Ja det synes jeg, fordi man er lidt over det hele så det synes jeg egentlig at man får mulighed for at lave lidt af hvert. Så det synes jeg. Man kan jo sige at det er forskellig hvem der står i køkkenet og ude i cafeen. Så på den måde kan man være med til at bestemme hvad man selv skal lave men der er selvfølgelig os tidspunkter hvor man får at vide at nu skal du lave det her. Og sådan er det jo os.

13. Har du tingene du skal bruge for at udføre dit arbejde? Hvis ikke, hvad gør det ved din arbejdssituation? Ja det har jeg.

14. Gør dine kollegaer deres indsats når de er på arbejde? Ja det synes jeg. Jeg synes at alle her nede gør det så godt som de kan og alle prøver at virkelig få det til at gå op og sådan noget. Så det synes jeg folk de gør, helt sikkert.

Opbakning 15. Modtager du ros og opmuntring for din arbejdsindsats af dine kollegaer og chefer? Jah, altså man kan da godt få sådan at det var fint lavet eller et eller andet så nogen gange men det er ikke noget der sker sådan helt vildt tit synes jeg ikke.

16. Synes du dine arbejdsgivere interessere sig for dig som person og giver dig tilstrækkelig opmærksomhed? Ja det synes jeg helt klart at de gør. Jeg synes at det er mega fedt her nede at man sagtens kan snakke med sine chefer uden at man behøver at snakke til dem som om de er chefer. De interessere sig os for hvad man går og laver privat og sådan noget. Og på samme måde omvendt også.

17. Høre dine arbejdsgivere og kollegaer efter når du ytre dine meninger og ideer? Jah.

18. Taler i omkring jeres udvikling? Har nogen givet dig respons på din udvikling de sidste 6 måneder?

Altså vi taler om sådan når man for eksempel kommer her ned i starten der var der nogle ting som man ikke sådan var så god til fordi man ikke havde prøvet det så meget før. Så på den måde kan man godt snakke lidt om det at nu kan man finde ud af det lige pludselig. Men ellers ikke sådan så meget synes jeg ikke.

19. Har du mulighed for at udvikle dig og lære i din arbejdsstilling? Jah.

Forandringer 20. Føler du at dine følelser for Madkompagniet har ændret sig i den tid du har arbejdet for Madkompagniet? Altså jeg synes at nu da man har arbejdet her nede i lidt længere tid så kender man jo også sådan alle de mennesker der arbejder her nede og man kender sine chefer lidt bedre så derfor vil man os hellere have at det ligesom skal gå godt. I starten var det mere bare et sted hvor man arbejdede synes jeg. Nu er det sådan at man virkelig gerne vil have at det skal gå godt fordi man ved hvad der sådan ligger bag. På den måde kan man godt sige at det er blevet lidt anderledes. Det er ikke bare et sted hvor man arbejder det er et sted hvor man virkelig gerne vil gøre en god indsats for at få det til at gå godt. Man føler ligesom et ansvar overfor de mennesker der arbejder her nede.

21. Overvejer du at skifte arbejdsplads ? Hvorfor, hvorfor ikke? Nej det overvejer jeg overhoved ikke jeg vil gerne blive her nede. Så længe jeg kan. Fordi jeg synes det er en god arbejdsplads og jeg kan godt lide de mennesker der arbejder her nede og jeg kan godt lide det vi sådan laver her nede. Så derfor ser jeg ikke rigtig nogen grund til at skrifte sted.

22. Har du oplevet stress eller en anden form for arbejdsrelateret nedbrud? Nej det har jeg ikke.

23. Hvordan har din tilfredshedsfornemmelse udviklet sig igennem din arbejdstid? Er du blevet mere og mere tilfreds eller omvendt? Jeg synes den er god jeg synes der er rigtig mange ting der er godt her nede så overordnet set er den god

Er der noget andet du vil tilføje? Nej.

Interviewet udført af: Cecilie Brock Jensen Interview person: Anonym

Dato for interview: 12.04.2013

Hvor lang tid har du arbejdet ved Madkompagniet? 2 år.

Hvor mange timer arbejder du i gennemsnit om ugen hos Madkompagniet? 20 timer.

Engagement? Følelser omkring arbejdet 1. Hvordan har du det når du arbejder? Jeg har det godt, det er en god arbejdsplads. Det er tilrettelagt efter at jeg er flexjobber jeg kan ikke tåle så stor belastning. Det er rigtig god arbejdstid jeg har fået. Jeg flexer at den ene uge har jeg dagvagt og den anden uge har jeg lukke vagt.

2. Hvilken mening føler du dette job giver for dig? Jamen jeg elsker at lave mad. Jeg elsker det sociale og det at man udfordres i nogle ting med maden her nede.

3. Inspirere det her job dig til ting i din hverdag og andre aspekter i dit liv? Ja mad er mit liv. Altså jeg elsker at lave mad og jeg elsker at være inden for madbranchen. Så det betyder rigtig meget for mig, at kunne blive inden for mit fag.

4. Er du stolt af at arbejde på Madkompagniet? Hvorfor? Ja det er jeg. Jeg er glad for mit arbejde.

5. Føler du at du bliver udfordret i dit job? Jeg bliver udfordret når de(cheferne) giver mig noget ansvar og kan være med i at tage nogle beslutninger her nede og få tingene til at køre og hjælpes godt ad og snakker om mange ting.

6. Holder du ud selvom tingene ikke altid går som de skal? Jah eller os så tager vi en snak om det. Altså det synes jeg, at der er åben, der er ikke noget der, så får vi snakket om det hvis der er nogle ting der skal laves om på. I øjeblikket tager jeg tingene som de kommer og simpelthen få det bedste ud af det og så handle på det.

Tidsfornemmelsen på arbejde 7. Hvordan føler du tiden går når du er på arbejde? Tiden går stærkt.

8. Har du lyst til at tage på arbejde om morgenen eller når du skal møde? Ja det her jeg.

9. Har du det bedst når der er meget at lave eller lidt at lave? Der er altid noget at lave i et køkken. Så selvfølgelig er der stille tider men så er der nogle andre ting der skal gøres jo. Det er godt begge dele det kan os blive for meget der kan os blive for hurtigt så man ikke når at få tingene gjord ordentlig færdig. Men altså jeg syntes at det er godt begge dele altså fordi der altid er noget man kan få lavet og man kan altid gøre nogle ting bedre når der er stille. Så er der nogle ting man kan forberede og nogle ting man kan gøre bedre og få snakket om hvad vi kan gøre for at effektiviserer.

10. Hvad betyder længden af en vagt for dig? Hvorfor? Altså jeg har jo fem timer hver gang jeg er på arbejde, det passer. Det er ud fra at så kan jeg og så have en hverdag når jeg kommer hjem. For ellers får jeg simpelthen for mange smerter.

Forudsætninger for engagement? Forventninger til arbejdet 11. Ved du hvad der bliver forventet af dig når du møder? Altså jah, altså de forventer mit engagement når jeg møder ind og at jeg er der fuldt ud. Men har man en off-dag så er det jo os bare at sige det, det kan vi alle sammen have jo. Men ellers jo man skal være engageret når man er på arbejde.

12. Har du mulighed for at udføre de opgaver som du er bedst til? Ja vi bliver jo sat til alle mulige ting så det er jo ikke altid det sjove man skal lave der er jo og så nogle ting der er trælse at lave. Sådan er det jo men jo selvfølgelig er der og så sjove ting at lave. Sådan er det på en arbejdsplads. Noget er sjovt at lave andre ting er mindre sjove at lave.

13. Har du tingene du skal bruge for at udføre dit arbejde? Hvis ikke, hvad gør det ved din arbejdssituation? Ja de fleste gange er der i hvert fald styr på det. Det gør at tingene at man kan udvikle sig og få tingene fra hånden. Og at man kan få tingene gjord færdig.

14. Gør dine kollegaer deres indsats når de er på arbejde? Ja det synes jeg ellers så kan vi jo og så godt snakke om det og tage hånd om det. Igen det er det med åbenhed og at snakke om tingene. Man tør godt sige til en at du lige er nød til at steppe-up eller et eller andet, hjælpe hinanden så godt som muligt.

Opbakning 15. Modtager du ros og opmuntring for din arbejdsindsats af dine kollegaer og chefer? Ja det gør jeg, det er daglig at få tilkendegivet at man laver et godt stykke arbejde. Der skal både være plads til ris og ros. Det skal man gerne kunne tåle, det skal man jo kunne arbejde med hvis der er nogle negative ting skal man arbejde med det. Man skal jo lære hele livet.

16. Synes du dine arbejdsgivere interessere sig for dig som person og giver dig tilstrækkelig opmærksomhed?

Helt sikkert. Vi har et godt forhold. Jeg snakker godt med begge af mine chefer. Vi har børn der har gået i skole sammen og vi har kendt hinanden helt tilbage fra da vi var unge mennesker.

17. Høre dine arbejdsgivere og kollegaer efter når du ytre dine meninger og ideer? Helt sikkert.

18. Taler i omkring jeres udvikling? Har nogen givet dig respons på din udvikling de sidste 6 måneder? Nej, nej det synes jeg ikke. Altså vi knokler altså der er jo nok at se til så det er lige så meget… altså det er nok lidt svært at stoppe op en gang imellem og lige. Det er jo igen hvordan man ser arbejdspladsen øhm med udvikling og alt sådan noget altså det er jo igen hvis man får for travlt så er der ikke tid til at udvikle sig. Så jeg tror det er vigtig at man tænker over at der og så skal være plads til at udvikle sig.

19. Har du mulighed for at udvikle dig og lære i din arbejdsstilling? Ja ja vi skal jo lære hele tiden som jeg sagde før og der kommer jo og så nye ting som jeg ikke har prøvet at lave og sådan noget så hele tiden er der jo nye ting vi prøver af og nye retter. Det synes jeg da engang imellem er, det er nok noget af det jeg synes at det er der ikke så meget tid til at udvikle.

Forandringer 20. Føler du at dine følelser for Madkompagniet har ændret sig i den tid du har arbejdet for Madkompagniet? Nej, altså jeg har altid været glad for at være her i den tid jeg har været her. Jeg var jo lige væk en halvanden måneds tid og kom tilbage så altså jeg har altid været glad for at være her.

21. Overvejer du at skifte arbejdsplads ? Hvorfor, hvorfor ikke? Nej, fordi jeg har det godt hvor jeg er og jeg befinder mig godt i den arbejdssituation hvori jeg er nu. Jeg synes at det fungere super godt, både hverdag og fritid og det sociale vi har her nede er super godt. Det sociale hænger meget sammen med de mange timer man er på en arbejdsplads i løbet af en uge at man os har noget socialt.

22. Har du oplevet stress eller en anden form for arbejdsrelateret nedbrud? Nej.

23. Hvordan har din tilfredshedsfornemmelse udviklet sig igennem din arbejdstid? Er du blevet mere og mere tilfreds eller omvendt? Vi har meget tilfreds kunder så det kan jo kun aflæses ved at vores kunder synes jeg. Jeg synes da og så at vi kan være stolte af det vi laver her nede. Det ser godt ud og det er noget god mad vi laver. Alting er forbundet der er ingen halve løsninger her.

Er der noget andet du vil tilføje? Ja, det betyder meget at man har et tæt samarbejde og at man kan snakke åbent om tingene på en arbejdsplads og at der ikke er noget der bliver puttet nogen steder. Man kan snakke lige på uanset om man er den ’gamle’ eller den ’unge’

Indledende spørgsmål Hvad er din alder? 18 år.

Hvor lang tid har du arbejdet ved Madkompagniet? 3 år.

Hvor mange timer arbejder du i gennemsnit om ugen hos Madkompagniet? Meget svingende timer: mellem 5 og 12 timer om ugen.

Engagement? Følelser omkring arbejdet 1. Hvordan har du det når du arbejder? Jeg føler at det er helt vildt hyggeligt at være her nede og jeg kan rigtig godt lide hele vores medarbejder gruppe. Og så kan jeg også godt lide vores chefer men nogen gange er der lidt for meget venneforhold og ikke så meget chef/ansat forhold. Alt i alt er jeg tilfreds når jeg er på arbejde.

2. Hvilken mening føler du dette job giver for dig? Det giver ikke særlig meget lønmæssigt man kunne jo sagtens finde noget der giver mere i løn men jeg synes helt sikkert at der er en dejlig sikkerhed og jeg kan rigtig godt lide at det er i Hornslet og at det er sådan et lille sted. Og der ikke er så meget, altså at man er tryg når man er her. Det kan jeg rigtig godt lide.

3. Inspirere det her job dig til ting i din hverdag og andre aspekter i dit liv? Nej, altså jeg ville engang være kok men det vil jeg ikke mere så nu er det sådan lidt pointless.

4. Er du stolt af at arbejde på Madkompagniet? Hvorfor? Ja helt sikkert. Mest fordi andre mennesker os er sådan at det bare er det fede sted du arbejder og folk de ved godt at det er et hyggeligt sted. Det er jo os en sted hvor man ikke lige kommer ind(får job) fordi det handler om at have lidt kontakter for at få lov til at komme ind et eller andet sted.

5. Føler du at du bliver udfordret i dit job?

Jeg vil sige at nu udfordres man ikke så meget mere nu når det bare sidder lidt på rygraden. Men altså helt sikkert når man skal ud og håndtere kunder der er lidt sure eller så skal man lige smøre et andet smil på så på den måde det der med at snakke med kunder som man ikke gider. Det synes jeg er, det er jo en udfordring og det har jo og så gjort at man er mere åben overfor andre mennesker.

6. Holder du ud selvom tingene ikke altid går som de skal? Der er lidt svært, det kommer an på hvem der har lavet den fejl. Hvis det er mig selv så bliver jeg meget sur på mig selv men hvis det er andre kan jeg godt blive lidt små irriteret men selvfølgelig finder man jo løsninger, man er jo nød til at finde ud af det for man er jo fælles på arbejde. Jeg føler generelt at jeg holder ud og har styr på tingene så længe cheferne ikke er over nakken på mig.

Tidsfornemmelsen på arbejde 7. Hvordan føler du tiden går når du er på arbejde? Den går lynhurtig hvis vi har noget at lave men ellers kan det godt hurtig blive meget langtrukket og kedeligt og ensformigt.

8. Har du lyst til at tage på arbejde om morgenen eller når du skal møde? Ja det har jeg hver dag. Selvom at jeg arbejder, hvis jeg arbejder meget en uge så har jeg stadig lyst.

9. Har du det bedst når der er meget at lave eller lidt at lave? Helt klart bedst hvis der er meget at lave. Jeg kan ikke finde ud af det hvis der ikke er meget at lave så keder jeg mig og går sådan lidt rundt og døller.

10. Hvad betyder længden af en vagt for dig? Hvorfor? Nej. Jeg kan bare altså bedst lide at arbejde, torsdag, fredag og lørdag for så føler jeg at man ligesom har kommet ned og har udrettet noget, man får ligesom noget ud af at være her selvom de der tirsdags vagter når man bare er her i en to tre timer så føler man lidt at man bare bruger en hel dag på at være her 3 timer.

Forudsætninger for engagement? Forventninger til arbejdet 11. Ved du hvad der bliver forventet af dig når du møder? Ja det er jeg udmærket godt klar over. Det er blevet lidt anderledes nu her når der er voksen på, når der er voksen på så er der ikke så store forventninger men ellers når det er min fredag eller hvad man siger, jeg ved godt jeg ikke har en fredag, men så er det lige som mig der bliver sat ind i alle tingene og mit ansvar hvis vi glemmer noget.

12. Har du mulighed for at udføre de opgaver som du er bedst til? Ja men nogen gange er det jo os sjovt at komme på altså at være ude i cafeen selvom det ikke er det jeg er bedst til.

13. Har du tingene du skal bruge for at udføre dit arbejde? Hvis ikke, hvad gør det ved din arbejdssituation?

Ja. Nogen gange ville jeg ønske at der var flere ting og anderledes ting så det skiftes lidt men ellers så synes jeg at vi er rigtig gode til at have de remedier der er behov for at udføre opgaven. Det gør min arbejdssituation nemmere.

14. Gør dine kollegaer deres indsats når de er på arbejde? Det er meget meget forskelligt alt efter hvem der er på arbejde. Det er jo klart at når vi er rigtig mange unge piger så er der jo hver sin indstilling til hvordan man agere på en arbejdsplads, om man er seriøs eller om man er useriøs eller om man det er en fredag hvor man skal i byen men altså primært så synes jeg at folk er rigtig gode til at udføre sit arbejde. Alle har jo dage hvor man slager lidt mere end andre.

Opbakning 15. Modtager du ros og opmuntring for din arbejdsindsats af dine kollegaer og chefer? Nej men man modtager jo heller ikke kritik ved mindre man har gjord noget forkert. Så på den måde er det vel og så en form for ros. Det at man får tillid altså at det er mig der får lov til at gå med pengene altså det er jo os en form for tillid og det er vel og så ros på en eller anden måde.

16. Synes du dine arbejdsgivere interessere sig for dig som person og giver dig tilstrækkelig opmærksomhed? Helt sikkert. Men det var jo det jeg snakkede om før. Det der personlige forhold, det der venneforhold som der nogen gange måske er godt men som der og så kan have sine bagsider.

17. Høre dine arbejdsgivere og kollegaer efter når du ytre dine meninger og ideer? Jeg føler at mine kollegaer høre efter men at mine chefer ikke så meget gør. Jeg føler at de er ret dårlige til at tage i mod kritik. Og hvis man kommer med nye ideer er de ikke så gode til at lytte.

18. Taler i omkring jeres udvikling? Har nogen givet dig respons på din udvikling de sidste 6 måneder? Nej overhoved ikke. Det kunne være rart nogen gange måske et ene møde en gang om året eller noget så man lige var klar over hvor man stod henne. Hvad fremtidsplanerne var og sådan noget også så man lige vidste hvor man har hinanden henne. Et eller andet sted, det kunne være lækkert.

19. Har du mulighed for at udvikle dig og lære i din arbejdsstilling? Jah. Men altså ikke så meget efter så lang tid. Det er jo meget det samme det er de samme ting man gør og det er jo fordi man arbejder sådan et sted her hvor det er meget det samme. Det er de samme ting vi har på menu kortet det er de samme mennesker næsten fordi det er i Hornslet der er jo ikke fordi vi ser nye ansigter så ofte og det er de samme mennesker der er på arbejde og det er de samme omgivelser. Så på den måde er det jo svært at der hele tiden skulle ske noget nyt.

Forandringer 20. Føler du at dine følelser for Madkompagniet har ændret sig i den tid du har arbejdet for Madkompagniet?

Altså det er jo klart at når man har været her i længere tid så er der jo en eller anden form for, altså det er lidt mere normalt . altså jeg bliver ikke så overgearet for at være på arbejde mere. Først var jeg helt vild og syntes at det var det fedeste nogensinde men det var nok os fordi jeg var lidt yngre, jeg var jo fjorten år da jeg startede.

21. Overvejer du at skifte arbejdsplads ? Hvorfor, hvorfor ikke? Jeg har overvejet det fordi at Maja åbnede nede i hallen og så tilbød hun mig 120 kr i timen men jeg gider ikke arbejde alene og jeg er rigtig rigtig glad for at der er så mange mennesker omkring mig og så kan jeg jo godt lide at man har det så fedt og at det lige er i Hornslet. Så hvis man skulle til at skifte skulle man til at side bag kassen oppe i fakta eller helt ind til Århus og det gider jeg ikke.

22. Har du oplevet stress eller en anden form for arbejdsrelateret nedbrud? nej overhoved ikke. Kun på arbejdspladsen men det er jo fordi det er en stressende arbejdsplads.

23. Hvordan har din tilfredshedsfornemmelse udviklet sig igennem din arbejdstid? Er du blevet mere og mere tilfreds eller omvendt? Jeg tror at jeg er blevet mere glad fordi det er jo klart jo mere vane det bliver og jo mere man kender menneskerne så man er meget mere tryg så man har det meget bedre på arbejdspladsen.

Er der noget andet du vil tilføje?

Hvor lang tid har du arbejdet ved Madkompagniet? 1,5 år

Hvor mange timer arbejder du i gennemsnit om ugen hos Madkompagniet? Næsten fuldtid

Engagement? Følelser omkring arbejdet

1. Hvordan har du det når du arbejder? Jeg har det meget godt, altså det er lidt, altså meget hvad hedder det ensformigt men det er et fedt arbejde og der er nogle søde mennesker.

2. Hvilken mening føler du dette job giver for dig? Altså pengemæssigt er det fint nok, selvfølgelig er det et arbejde jeg laver for at tjene lidt penge og spare lidt penge op men altså det er ikke det der giver mest og det er helt sikkert fordi der er nogle søde mennesker derover som man arbejder sammen med, så det er helt sikkert og så det sociale der ligger i det.

3. Inspirere det her job dig til ting i din hverdag og andre aspekter i dit liv? Altså i og med at det er et sted hvor man laver mad så kommer man selvfølgelig os til at gøre noget ud af det når man så er væk fra arbejdspladsen og så udnytte de ting man lære her.

4. Er du stolt af at arbejde på Madkompagniet? Hvorfor? Jeg vil ikke sige stolt tror jeg ikke, altså jeg vil heller ikke sige at det, hvis man nu skulle havde arbejdet i Kiwi eller et eller andet det havde jeg måske haft lidt svært ved at sidde og sige til forældrene eller et eller andet men jeg synes at det er et fint arbejdssted det er ikke noget jeg er flov over at arbejde med overhoved jeg synes at det er rigtig fint.

5. Føler du at du bliver udfordret i dit job? Altså man lære da at tage lidt mere ansvar i forhold til at vi har nogle arbejdstimer hvor at de overansvarlige chefer ikke er der og hvor man så selv skal træde i karakter. På det faglige niveau så ved jeg ikke helt om det er udfordre mig sådan voldsomt fordi det jo meget er det samme vi laver, så når du først er inde i det er der ikke så meget udfordring der men det der med at man får tildelt ansvar det gør jobbet til en udfordring.

6. Holder du ud selvom tingene ikke altid går som de skal? Ja altså jeg bliver måske sådan lidt, jeg er måske ikke den bedste i en presset situation men altså så er det bare med at tænke på at dagen også er omme på et tidspunkt, så er det bare med at tænke på at det går over på et tidspunkt hvis der er allermest travlt.

Tidsfornemmelsen på arbejde 7. Hvordan føler du tiden går når du er på arbejde? Altså vi har sådan nogle faste tidspunkter hvor vi spiser og sådan noget og så plejer jeg nogen gange at gå der efter og så virker det som om at det, at tiden virkelig har gået hurtigt til at starte med men den sidste time den synes jeg den er lidt hård fordi at der faktisk ikke er særlig meget at lave og der går man bare rundt og forbereder til i aften. Mellem kl. 3 og 4 der går tiden langsomt.

8. Har du lyst til at tage på arbejde om morgenen eller når du skal møde? Ja det har jeg.

9. Har du det bedst når der er meget at lave eller lidt at lave? Det afhænger rigtig meget af hvordan jeg selv har det sådan lige i øjeblikket men som regel kan jeg bedst lide at der er noget at lave så føles tiden og så som om den går lidt

hurtigere. Men det er også meget hyggeligt en gang imellem at have en dølle dag og bare hygge med dem der over.

10. Hvad betyder længden af en vagt for dig? Hvorfor? Jeg vil helt sikkert helst have en lang vagt jeg synes at det føles lidt sådan unødvendigt at komme for to timer jeg føler ikke at jeg får nok ud af det så jeg vil helt sikkert helst have den lange vagt.

Forudsætninger for engagement? Forventninger til arbejdet 11. Ved du hvad der bliver forventet af dig når du møder? Ja helt sikkert. Der bliver sat en standard der over som jeg selvfølgelig prøver at leve så godt op til som muligt og så har jeg selvfølgelig og så en standard for mig selv som jeg gerne vil leve op til.

12. Har du mulighed for at udføre de opgaver som du er bedst til? Ja helt sikkert. Jeg har sådan en specifik ting som jeg altid bliver sat til eller flere forskellige ting men som regel nogle ting sådan fordi det er en opgave jeg er god til at løse og så er jeg som regel den de sætter til det

13. Har du tingene du skal bruge for at udføre dit arbejde? Hvis ikke, hvad gør det ved din arbejdssituation? Ja helt sikkert altså der sker da en gang imellem at vi lige render lidt ud men jeg synes som regel at de er gode til at få det løst hurtigt

14. Gør dine kollegaer deres indsats når de er på arbejde? Ej der er nogle gange at jeg forventer lidt mere af dem men det er måske os bare mig der forventer en del til mig selv og så forlanger jeg så også måske lidt for meget af mine kollegaer i hvert fald nogle af ung arbejderne synes jeg nogen gange at der lige skal en kærlig hånd til.

Opbakning 15. Modtager du ros og opmuntring for din arbejdsindsats af dine kollegaer og chefer? Ja der synes jeg helt sikkert af jeg gør, måske mest på det kreative plan fordi det er altid mig som får de opgaver med at skulle pakke gaver ind og skal lave håndmadder og alt det der med at skrive skilte og sådan noget. Det er jo en ros i sig selv at de altid spørger mig fordi de synes at jeg gør det godt.

16. Synes du dine arbejdsgivere interessere sig for dig som person og giver dig tilstrækkelig opmærksomhed? Ja rigtig meget jeg synes tit at vi snakker meget personligt altså det gør vi som regel altid udover at arbejde vi snakker meget personligt på sådan et dagligt niveau det er meget hyggeligt.

17. Høre dine arbejdsgivere og kollegaer efter når du ytre dine meninger og ideer? Det afhænger lidt af i hvilken situation jeg bringer dem i for hvis det er at der er lidt travlt der over så er der som regel noget som de ikke helt tager til sig men helt sikkert de

er gode til at tage i mod ideer og sådan noget nu har jeg også fået indført en ret derover som også bare var et forslag som de tog til efterretning og så fik smidt på menukortet så på den måde er det jo et fint eksempel

18. Taler i omkring jeres udvikling? Har nogen givet dig respons på din udvikling de sidste 6 måneder? Altså vi har jo personale møder hvor vi er ret gode til hver især at sådan lige at komme ind med nogle bidrag til også ikke kun på det arbejdsmæssige men og så på det personlige plan hvis det er at man føler at der har været noget som måske ikke er så godt eller om der har været noget som har været rigtig godt så synes jeg folk er gode til at rose hinanden.

19. Har du mulighed for at udvikle dig og lære i din arbejdsstilling? Altså nu er det ikke noget der siger mig sådan voldsomt meget interessemæssigt men selvfølgelig kan man altid udvikle sig med de fag man er i på den ene eller den anden måde men ikke sådan noget jeg føler at jeg skal bruge meget videre ud i livet

Forandringer 20. Føler du at dine følelser for Madkompagniet har ændret sig i den tid du har arbejdet for Madkompagniet? Ja fordi man lære jo nogle folk at kende, i starten var man måske lidt mere tilbøjeligt til bare at sådan tage i mod det og bare nikke og være glad hvor man ikke sådan rigtig tænker over hvis der nu var nogle ting man faktisk var lidt utilfreds med hvor man så senere hen nu lære tingene at kende og lære stedet at kende og personerne hvor man måske er lidt mere tilbøjeligt til godt at kunne vrisse lidt hvis der er noget der ikke fungere som man gerne vil have det.

21. Overvejer du at skifte arbejdsplads ? Hvorfor, hvorfor ikke? Pt. Nej

22. Har du oplevet stress eller en anden form for arbejdsrelateret nedbrud? Nej

23. Hvordan har din tilfredshedsfornemmelse udviklet sig igennem din arbejdstid? Er du blevet mere og mere tilfreds eller omvendt? Jeg tror egentlig at den har været meget sådan monoton, der har ikke rigtig været noget som ikke rigtig har været… altså i og med at man får mere ansvar føler man også et større behov for at skulle blive en del af arbejdspladsen og have lidt mere styr på tingene.

Er der noget andet du vil tilføje? jeg tror at vi føler at vi får forskellige mængder ros fordi mange af de unge piger kun er på arbejde om eftermiddagen og aftenen hvor cheferne ikke er der til at rose dem.