Case Study of a Finnish Retail Company

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master_Levamo_Anni_2019.pdf (831.29 KB)

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School of Business | Master's thesis
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Date

2019

Department

Johtamisen laitos

Major/Subject

Mcode

Degree programme

Management and International Business (MIB)

Language

en

Pages

72+2

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Abstract

For the past recent years, there has been discussion about the “war of talent” in the labour market. It refers to a situation where employers face challenges in attracting talents to work for them and later in retaining them. Therefore, employers need increasingly to stand out among other employers and employee experience has been identified as a possible solution for this challenge. Internal communication in turn, is an essential part of work in every organization and it can influence the way how employees perceive the employer. Hence, can be assumed that internal communication influences also the employee experience. This thesis was conducted as a single case study for a case company, which is a large, Finnish company operating in retail business. The objective of this study was to investigate whether and how internal communication can influence employee experience. Employee experience has been identified as a notion, which can be perceived in many different ways. Hence, there was first a need to explore what it means specifically for the employees in the case company and how do they experience working in the case company. From the internal communication areas this study focuses on internal corporate communication and internal line manager communication, as those two can be strategically managed by the company. The used data of this study is collected by interviewing case company employees from different positions and business areas. Findings of this study demonstrate that employee experience consists of social, physical and employee’s personal conditions. More specifically, the conditions include organizational culture and community, values, supportive and guiding managers, facilitating premises, meaningful work with development opportunities and holistic work wellbeing. All above mentioned elements are influenced by internal communication and the employee experience can be improved through internal corporate communication and internal line manager communication. In particular, both ICC and internal line manager communication should be viewed as complementing each other. In terms of internal communication, positive employee experience can be achieved, when the employee receives enough information in order to perform his or her work and to satisfy the curiosity, gets inspired by the ICC messages, has a trust-based relationship with his or her line manager and is led through effective line manager communication.

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Thesis advisor

Pälli, Pekka

Keywords

employee experience, internal communication, line manager communication, internal corporate communication, strategy communication

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https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-202001121503

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[gradu] Kauppakorkeakoulu / BIZ