How are you, expert employee? Employee wellbeing in an expert organization

Abstract

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES This thesis contributes to employee wellbeing research tradition and focuses especially on investigating the expert employee’s wellbeing at work. The purpose of the study is to examine how expert employees define the term employee wellbeing, and to find out how they construct their understanding of wellbeing at work. I will also investigate whether Scrum method, a way of working implemented in the organization, affects on employees’ wellbeing and how employees experience the influence of the working method for their wellbeing.

METHODOLOGY The study is a qualitative case study conducted in the Research and Development department of an international telecommunications company. The empirical part of the study consists of 12 semi-structured interviews of employees who were working as software or testing engineers and of the company’s internal materials such as intranet pages and wellbeing related documents. The empirical data was analyzed with content analysis method.

RESULTS Findings of the study show that the expert employees perceive wellbeing as motivation, autonomy, convenience or work ability. Psychological and social dimensions of employee wellbeing were highlighted when employees defined employee wellbeing. On the contrary, the employer in question emphasizes the physical side of wellbeing. A pronounced significance of actual work was also characteristic for the expert employees and they emphasized the meaning of actual work for their wellbeing at work. Findings suggest that when developing employee wellbeing in an expert organization, the attention should be drawn to matters that expert employees themselves consider important for their wellbeing. In addition, the special attention needs to be given also to the proper implementation and application used of the working method.

KEYWORDS Employee wellbeing, expert organization, Scrum Method