Well-Being in the Workplace: Governance and Sustainability Insights to Promote Workplace Health by Nicole Cvenkel

Author:Nicole Cvenkel
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789811536199
Publisher: Springer Singapore

10.3 Methodology

This chapter is based on a case study conducted within a local authority in the North West of England. The authority is located in an urban region and is one of the most socially polarised in the country. The case study was conducted during 2005–2007 when a Labour Government was in power both nationally and within the authority studied. A strategy of the New Labour government was to implement funding reductions in keeping with the modernisation agenda. The authority was selected as appropriate to study because it professed to have adopted well-being policies and practices to establish employee well-being at work, a positive attendance culture, and enhance staff welfare. A number of different types of data were collected. The authority’s written HRM policy and procedure documents were analysed. Field notes were written and analysed of the researcher’s experience conducting research within the authority. Finally, a series of focused semi-structured interviews were conducted with managerial and non-managerial employees exploring their experiences of HRM practices and well-being initiatives. This chapter will draw particularly on these interviews. The process of gaining access was met with challenges and tensions and required the researcher having to jump through several ‘hoops’ of taylorised processes, controlled systems, and a series of negotiations before access to employees was granted. Even further, the researcher had to begin a new process of negotiations with employees to get people to talk honestly about their working life experiences and well-being at work.

Twenty-seven semi-structured face-to-face interviews were conducted with managerial and non-managerial employees (15 managers and 12 employees) with the aim of understanding their experiences of HRM practices and well-being initiatives. Purposive sampling was used to ensure that all departments within the Council were reflected in the study. All twenty-seven informants were Caucasian; (23 respondents) aged 40–59 years, and (4 respondents) aged 20–39 years. They were all well-educated up to master’s degree for managerial employees and HND/C for non-managerial employees; the majority (i.e. 25) worked full time and reported a range of incomes1 and held a variety of tenures with the organisation.2

The interview approach was collaborative where information was exchanged between the informant (i.e. employee) and the researcher in both directions and the emphasis was on listening to what the informant said as opposed to guiding and controlling the conversation (Morse 1991). A retrospective approach was used to solicit narratives of experiences from informants asking them to talk about their experiences and as such, the first question asked was open ended ‘what is it like to work for the Council?’ This was followed by probing questions focusing on eliciting narrative data, as opposed to explanations or opinions until the employees’ experiences were fully described (Ray 1994; Smith and Osborne 2003). Each interview lasted between 60–90 min and was tape-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analysed using hermeneutic phenomenological analysis (HPA) (Van Manen 1994).

The interview schedule covered two broad topics: (1) understanding of well-being at work; and (2) views on well-being initiatives in the organisation. Both managerial and non-managerial employees were asked to respond in

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.