Employee Experience and Company Culture

This assignment examines the workplace environment and culture of a tech company through interviews with employees. The analysis focuses on employees' perceptions of their job roles, motivations, company policies, and the impact of the company's investment in employee education. The findings highlight positive aspects such as open work attitudes, qualified staff, and career development opportunities provided by the company.

Running Head: CONTENT ANALYSIS 1
Content Analysis
Student’s Name
Institution
Date

CONTENT ANALYSIS 2
Qualitative methods
Common themes
One of the most obvious things to be observed when you read through the interviews is
that both participant 1 and participant 2's interviews were conducted in their offices. This seems
to me like a common theme which seems to hold a meaningful value to the interviewer. The
logical reasoning behind this approach is that interviewees tend to be repulsed by the setting that
is usually typical of most interviews (Jones & Risi, 2015). Having a panel of stern-faced
interviewers with all eyes on you can have an intimidating effect on an interviewee hence the
idea of a more personalized, one on one interview with a single interviewer can bring about the
notion of more confidence and security. Conducting the interviews for both participant 1 and 2 in
their offices ensured that they felt secure and in the comfort of the familiar environment.
Coding is usually a prolonged and expensive practice, especially if a researcher is using
full transcribing processes (Huberman & Saldana, 2013). For this research, I used partial
transcription where instead of rewriting the whole interview, I used partial transcription which is
writing down a summary which has well-elaborated details answering all the questions. This
summary shows another theme that seemed to show great importance to the researcher, which is
the hierarchy theme. The researcher asks both participant 1 and two about the structure of the
chain of command at their workplace by telling them to describe how power is distributed along
the chain of command. He goes ahead to ask the participants on how easy or difficult it is to get
access- whether verbal or written, to the mid-level management and senior-level management.
The researcher gets information on the overall quality of leadership at the company by asking
both participant 1 and two about how they felt about approaching the management about issues
facing them at the workplace whether positive or negative.

CONTENT ANALYSIS 3
Another common theme addressed is the reward mechanism employed at the company.
Participant 1 and two are both asked to describe the reward and recognition process at the
company and what is required of an employee to achieve a reward. The questions seek to
identify the roles that are stipulated to every employee and how willing the employees engage
these activities and how they address issues such putting in extra work (Agwu, 2013). This theme
also correlates with the other side of the coin which is punished or dismissal of an employee.
Participant 1 and two are asked about the process of firing an employee, what constitutes poor
performance and what activities could lead to the dismissal of a worker. The interviewer asks
about the processes involved in assessing faults at the workplace and how the management deals
with poor performance on the job and seeks to understand which mistakes are tolerable and
which ones require drastic decisions to be made.
The researcher also asks the interviewees about their roles, duties and their level of
satisfaction in the job. Through his questions, he tries to probe into know the extent of the
participants' impact on the performance of the company based on their intuition and judgment
(Feinholdt & Lang, 2013). This is important in determining the passion of the employees
regarding the effort they put in at work and whether they feel that their work is being noticed and
or appreciated. Another question about the reward mechanism at work and the appreciation of
individual contributions to the good performance of the company is that of whom the participants
felt were the heroes at the workplace. The researcher tries to determine the relationship between
the participants of the interview and these said heroes and try to see if they emulate these heroes,
values, assumptions, biases, and goals.
In the school-to-work segment, the theme of the level of education stands out. The researcher
asks both the interviewees questions on their level of education. These questions include details

CONTENT ANALYSIS 4
about where both participant 1 and 2 studied for the high school diploma, the undergraduate
program and the master’s level of education. This information is critical in determining the
qualifications required during the hiring of new personnel at the corporation and understanding
the level of expertise that the employees of a company possess (Kadushin & Harkness, 2014).
The researcher, by using qualitative methods to collect his data, identifies the participants'
personal opinions on how to develop the qualities of good performance at the company. He asks
the respondents to give details on how their vocation towards the work they currently do start
out. His asks about previous work experiences, their relation to the current line of work and how
the activities from these experiences affected the outcome of the participants' attitudes towards
their current work.
The researcher seeks answers on what the participants felt were the key attributes of
Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes required to be successful in the world of work. These questions
were coupled with questions seeking to address the relationship between KSA's and a good work
ethic (Rutstein & Ziker, 2017). The questions also seek information on which of these attributes
the respondents felt were most important and at which stage in their lives they acquired these
skills.
Results
The initial stages of the interviews were about the general reaction towards the
workplace, particularly whether the respondents enjoyed working at the company or not. Most of
the participants seemed to enjoy working at the company while participant 4 felt that he was still
adjusting to the system and was still in the process of conforming to the new workplace culture
and norms. The research made the effort of trying to make his respondents comfortable by
conducting the interviews at their places of work, that is, their offices. The researcher went ahead

CONTENT ANALYSIS 5
to describe the nature of the interview and assured the respondents that the interview was
confidential.
The 1st respondent had a more straight-to-the point approach and preferred to keep his
answers on the topic. He had a positive attitude towards work and the general workplace. He felt
that he enjoyed working at the company and described it as ‘fun.' Working at this company gave
the respondent a sense of pride as he described his company as a top growth company in the top
20 IT services offering company. He was well-versed with the company's history as he described
how the company grew from creating system software for the then more established
technological giants in the field of IT in 1959 such as IBM and then expanding to government
contracts in the 1960's. He noted that the company’s preferred customers were government
agencies particularly the department of defense. According to respondent 1, the most powerful
people at the company were the Chief Executive Officer, the company President and Chairman
of the board of directors.
Matters of change at the company were handled delicately and slowly with emphasis on
not making the same mistakes that International Business Machines (IBM) had committed in the
past regarding responding to changes in the marketplace (Sciacca & Rossel, 2014). Respondent 2
didn't seem to have a particular interest in understanding the inner working mechanisms in the
company especially about the company's past and growth development. She argued that her
position only allowed for her to concentrate on the official roles and responsibilities delegated to
her. She, however, mentioned that there were minimal supervision and oversight from senior
management and that most of the leadership was based on a friendly tone and that rubbing
shoulders with the senior staff often occurred at the workplace.

CONTENT ANALYSIS 6
Communication at the workplace, according to participant 1, was done via Lotus Notes,
IBM server-client software (Kaufman & Speciner, 2016). Respondent 1 felt that this method was
efficient in conducting the day to day passing of information at the company. Respondent 2
argued that she found E-mail system to be more convenient. She mentioned that she found e-mail
to be a potent tool in sending messages and information to one's superiors and employees and
even admitted to using the email more than she used her phone. Participant 1 argued that most of
the employees would agree to the fact that the e-mail system worked best, and this could be
attributed that employees such as participant 1 felt more comfortable addressing sensitive or
negative information via email rather than talking directly to their superiors although sending of
negative mail to superiors was discouraged at the company (Men, 2014).
Workplace etiquette was also a concern and questions regarding some of the rules both
written and unwritten were asked. According to the respondents, the written rules were put down
in the company policy document which participant 2 described as a brief document that
comprised of just a few pages. This meant that understanding and adhering to company policy,
rules and regulations were not a cumbersome task and it also meant that the company conducted
a more open and flexible relationship within the workforce. There were, however, few unwritten
rules which the responded said were mentioned during the orientation training (Chater, 2014).
These include codes of conduct such as proper and inoffensive language use and dressing code.
In conclusion, the employees had an open attitude towards working at the company, and
they were academically qualified to be in those posts. Participant 1 was advancing his career, and
the company was catering for his Masters University program. Having a company pay for its
employees' further studies goes a long way in fostering loyalty and good performance among
employees (Ton, 2014).

CONTENT ANALYSIS 7
References

CONTENT ANALYSIS 8
Jones, R., Risi, S., Wexler, D., Anderson, D., Corsello, C., Pickles, A., & Lord, C. (2015). How
interview questions are placed in time influences caregiver description of social
communication symptoms on the ADI‐R. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry,
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Miles, M., Huberman, A., & Saldana, J. (2013). Qualitative data analysis. Sage.
Agwu, M. (2013). Impact of fair reward system on employees‟ job performance in Nigerian
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Behavioral Science, 3(1), 47-64.
Hülsheger, U., Alberts, H., Feinholdt, A., & Lang, J. (2013). Benefits of mindfulness at work:
The role of mindfulness in emotion regulation, emotional exhaustion, and job
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Kadushin, A., & Harkness, D. (2014). Supervision in social work. Columbia University Press.
Mislevy, R., Haertel, G., Riconscente, M., Rutstein, D., & Ziker, C. (2017). Evidence-centered
assessment design. In Assessing Model-Based Reasoning using Evidence-Centered
Design (pp. 19-24). Springer, Cham.
Sciacca, C., & Rossel, C. (2014). The evolution of IBM Research-Looking back at 50 years of
scientific achievements and innovations. Europhysics News, 45(2), 16-20.
Ton, Z. (2014). The good jobs strategy: How the smartest companies invest in employees to
lower costs and boost profits. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Perlman, R., Kaufman, C., & Speciner, M. (2016). Network security: private communication in a
public world. Pearson Education India.

CONTENT ANALYSIS 9
Men, L. (2014). Strategic internal communication: Transformational leadership, communication
channels, and employee satisfaction. Management Communication Quarterly, 28(2), 264-
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Misyak, J. B., Melkonyan, T., Zeitoun, H., & Chater, N. (2014). Unwritten rules: virtual
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