Motivation och arbetstillfredsställelse i ett monotont arbete : En kvantitativ fallstudie gjord på kassamedarbetare på Ica Kvantum och Coop Forum

Sammanfattning: Motivation, in an organizational context, is about whether the employees feel that their work is worthwhile, satisfactory and that there are opportunities for further development within the organization. However, motivation can be affected by a number of factors that originate from the employees’ characteristics, the characteristics of the situation and the individuals perception of that situation. A factor that could lead to a low level of motivation is if the employee feels that his work is monotonous. Thus the purpose was to study the factors that lead to motivation and job satisfaction in a working environment that generally is considered monotonous and dull by investigating the target group cashiers at two Swedish grocery stores called Ica Kvantum and Coop Forum. In this study a quantitative method was used by the design of a questionnaire. The questionnaire was used to get a general idea of the factors that the respondents consider motivating in their work. The results and the analysis of the questionnaire show that you really cannot make any general conclusions since there are many different factors that lead to motivation depending on who you are as an individual and in what phase of life one finds oneself. However one could, on the basis of the questionnaire, see certain patterns and tendencies. The factors that motivated the respondents had a certain relation to age, period of employment and level of occupation. Young part-time cashiers are motivated by a salary that is relatively high in relation to their work effort. Older cashiers are mainly motivated by an employment security as they are assumed to have a family to support. The working environment is also an important motivational factor as the questionnaire showed that the store that was using work rotation seemed to have more satisfied cashiers. Furthermore the importance of the social relations in a monotonous work was examined. On the basis of the two cases one could observe that the social relations are important to the co-workers as long as you are at work but that these relations did not have any importance outside of working hours. The motivational factor “possibilities for further development” was ranked very low by the respondents in the two stores. This led to the conclusion that the individuals that seek an employment as a cashier in a grocery store do not preferably seek an employment with possibilities for development but rather a wage and job security.