Job satisfaction of certified employees in viticulture: A qualitative study

1 Introduction

The agricultural structural change – the trend to-wards fewer and bigger farms – has reached the wine-growing sector. This structural change leads to a growing number of employees in the wine-growing industry [1, 2].

Working conditions in viticulture are similar to working conditions of other agricultural activities. They are characterised by long working hours in the main season of summer and autumn. During times of pruning, foliage work and harvest the workload is particularly great, which also requires work at the weekend [3]. The working hours and duties are determined by the seasons and are inflexible for the employees in the main season. Additionally, in viticulture in spite of mechanisation, there is still a high need for manual labour [1]. Activities under severe weather conditions and in uncomfortable positions can lead to physical strain [4, 5]. Comparing the agricultural sector with other economic sectors shows that agriculture is the economic area with the highest number of occupational health problems [6].

Besides inflexible working hours and physical strain, the agricultural sector stands out for a low wage level [1, 7]. Besides these negative aspects of agricultural activities, studies showed that agricultural employees have a high degree of joy in their jobs and often show a higher job satisfaction than employees of other industries [8, 9].

The survey of job satisfaction is one possibility of human resource management to address the needs of employees. The importance of human resource management in viticulture rises with the structural change. The growth of the farms contributes to a rising amount of non-family labour force needing employee management [1].

Job satisfaction is one of the most often examined research subjects in organisational psychology [10]. In the history of job satisfaction, there are different definitions of the construct of job satisfaction and a variety of measuring methods. In this viticultural study, job satisfaction was understood as meeting employees' needs, examining the work itself and its effect on people.

Since the 1990s, studies of job satisfaction have been carried out in different company areas and agricultural sectors. The winegrowing sector lacks such scientific investigations. There is no scientific literature about human resource management in viticulture although the importance of human resource management has increased due to the rising amount of employees. To close this research gap, this investigation into the job satisfaction of certified employees in viticulture is a first contribution. The aim of the study is to find out which factors contribute to job satisfaction in viticulture and how satisfied employees in the viticultural sector are with these factors. Finally, as a basis for further research, hypotheses were developed. In addition, first recommendations for employers to create attractive jobs in the wine-growing sector were formulated.

2 Materials

Sixteen people were interviewed in Germany and Austria. The objective of the selection of interviewees and their wineries was not the representation of the basic totality of the employees in the German and Austrian viticulture. Rather, the selection aimed at achieving a wide variety between the interviewees. According to Grounded Theory, as much data is collected as necessary for the comparison and distinction of the interviewed groups, and for generating a theory [11]. Because of the time frame of the present work, only a small number of groups were interviewed. The interviewed employees, working in a high position, had to work in wineries or cooperatives, in a vineyard or a wine cellar. Half of the interviewees were found in the social environment of the interviewer. Common friends of interviewer and interviewees create a basis of trust which contributes to honest answers to personal questions about job satisfaction especially [12]. The other half of the interviewees was selected randomly by using the snowball principle in the closer geographic environment. To be able to classify the explanatory power of the results, the interviewed group, as far as possible, was compared to the basic totality of viticultural and agricultural employees in Germany or Austria.

Table 1 shows the most important characteristics of the interviewees and their wineries. The group of interviewees was composed of three winemakers, four vineyard managers, four production managers working in the cellar and in the production of sparkling wine as well as three managers for cellar and foreign trade. One interviewed person worked in filling, equipment and packaging of the bottles. Another interviewee was responsible for works in the cellar, vineyard and in sales. Six women and ten men were interviewed. The average age of the interviewees was 34 years. With a proportion of 62 percent of the interviewees being under the age of 34, the interviewed group was considerably younger than the average agricultural employee [13]. The education level of the group was high compared to the basic totality of agricultural employees. Half of the interviewees hold a bachelor’s degree; three of the interviewees even hold a master’s degree. To compare, in Germany approximately 5.5 percent of agricultural managers had a bachelor or advanced technical college degree in 2016 [14].

In three companies, two employees were interviewed, so that the amount of companies in which employees were interviewed was 13. Seven companies were located in Germany and six companies were in Austria. The size of the wineries varied between 7 and 440 hectares. The average size of the companies was 60 hectares, including the areas of the cooperative members. The wineries in this survey were much bigger in comparison to the average winery in Austria being 3.22 hectares [15]. Two wineries were cooperatives, four wineries were family owned and one company was owned by the city. Information about the types of the other companies was not collected.

Since this study is the first investigation into job satisfaction in the winegrowing sector, a qualitative, inductive procedure was chosen. Another reason for the choice of a qualitative method was the proven difficulty in measuring job satisfaction with standardised quantitative procedures [10, 17]. The qualitative approach also allows the ability to capture the ambivalence in the judgement of job satisfaction or influence of personality and daily variations of job satisfaction. Judge et al. [10] suggest methods based on the Grounded Theory of Glaser and Strauss [11] for the evaluation of job satisfaction. This methodology developed by Glaser and Strauss [11] is characterised by the fact that the theory is not checked empirically, but is developed through empirical research.

The data was collected with qualitative, non-sta-ndardised interviews. To gurantee the comparability of the interviews, a guide questionnaire was used. The questions were kept open, so that the interviewees could freely express their thoughts. Knowledge from theoretical and empirical job satisfaction research was used to create the questionnaire. The survey and evaluation took place at the same time. The questi-onnaire was complemented in the ongoing research process with other questions emering from prior in-terviews. The final questionnaire encompassed 19 subject areas (activity, remuneration, working hours, work equipment, danger in the job, position, opportunities for advancement, relation to superiors and colleagues, training programme, reputation of the work, life situation (home, social network), leisure activities, consumption of alcohol, relation to the village community and occupational colleagues, re-cognition by customers and superiors, role of the company form, company philosophy and wine quality, dream of owning a vineyard, investment confidence and experiences as a woman in the wine sector).

The interviews took place in November 2017 and January 2018. They were recorded with an audio device Voice Tracer DVT 4010 by Philips and were transcribed. On average, the interviews lasted 46 minutes.

With the help of the software of qualitative data analysis, Max QDA in the version Plus 2018, the data was evaluated. The analysis was done on the basis of the theoretical coding after the Grounded Theory [11]. Eighty-two inductive categories were created.

There were several steps to analyse the factors influencing job satisfaction. Aspects were considered as factors influencing job satisfaction if they were mentioned by the interviewees, without asking for it (self-naming). The aspects which were emphasised as important for job satisfaction or as especially positive or negative were counted as influencing factors. Additionally, aspects which were named by the interviewees in connection with their motivation to enter or stay in the company were determined to be influencing job satisfaction. These namings were counted and every category (self-naming, important aspect, reason to quit/stay) was considered only once per interview. Thus, an array of job satisfaction factors arose, ranked by the amount of the interviews in which they were referred to (Table 2).

In the second step, it was examined how satisfied the employees were with the individual aspects of their work. They were assigned to three categories: positively valued factors of influence, negatively valued factors of influence and ambivalent valued factors of influence.

In this section, the results of the interviews are presented. In the first step, the ascertained influencing factors of the job satisfaction are shown. Afterwards, results of satisfaction or discontent of the employees with the individual factors of their work are discussed.

The perceived job satisfaction of certified employees in the wine-growing sector coincided in large part with the job satisfaction of agricultural employees. The high influence of the work itself, working in nature and the variety of the agricultural work on job satisfaction was also proved in the study of Näther et al. [18] and Mußhoff et al. [7] for agricultural employees and in the study of Bitsch and Hogberg [19] for employees of the horticultural sector. The physical work in horticulture was, as in the wine-growing sector, one of the reasons for the employees to change their job [20]. Prematurely leaving a job because of physical strain matched the statements of agricultural employees in Dippmann's study [21]. Dippmann [21] determined that the agricultural employees changed jobs because of physical problems. In a French study, it was found that 90 percent of 3,963 winegrowers indicated that they suffered from pain because of their job during the past 12 months and that 44 percent of the interviewees were hindered by the pain from continuing working [5]. Among employees in agriculture, back problems are no rarity. Also 33 percent of the interviewed trainees in horticulture complained about back problems [20].

The low influence of working hours on job satisfaction in the wine-growing sector corresponded to the study results of other agricultural areas [18]. In the present childless situation of the employees, the missing time for childcare beside work does not lead to a lower job satisfaction. In future this factor can lead to job changes. Also, the possibilities of part-time work within a company would have a bigger effect on the satisfaction of the employees in future. The effects of operationally offered part-time jobs and of the compatibility of family and work on the job satisfaction were not evaluated in agricultural job satisfaction studies.

In the study of job satisfaction of horticultural trainees, the interviewees were unhappy with the status of the horticultural sector and the profession as a gardener [20]. Mußhoff et al. [7] and Gindele et al. [22] stated that the bad public image of agriculture is one of the reasons for the skill shortages in that sector. These observations were not made in the wine-growing sector. The public image of viticulture compared to general agriculture is mostly positive. It was proved that job prestige had a positive influence on job satisfaction [23]. The certified viticultural employees enjoy a high professional reputation.

The job satisfaction aspects which have not been mentioned in literature so far, but turned out to be factors of influence on the job satisfaction in this study were: company philosophy and quality of the wines, growth and development of the company, equality, relation to colleagues and companies in the region and the relation to the final product. In existing studies, these factors were not explicitly mentioned as job satisfaction factors. This may partly be due to the coarser categorisations carried out in other investigations. In the agricultural investigations of Bitsch [24], Mußhoff et al. [7] and Näther et al. [18], these aspects were determined as a part of the influencing factors working conditions and company organisation. These coarser factors contained different aspects of job satisfaction, which were raised separately in the present study. In this study, factors of incuence were not summarised. By evaluating a higher variety of specific factors, the different degrees of influence on the job satisfaction of the employees were analysed more precisely for the wine-growing sector.

Another aspect of job satisfaction not investigated by other agricultural studies was the factor of the relation to the final product. For the certified employees in the wine-growing sector, the relation to wine constituted an intrinsic motivation. The influence of intrinsic motivation of employees in agriculture was not defined further even though it was outlined in several studies [7, 8]. A reason why the aspect of the relation to the end product in other job satisfaction studies was not surveyed can be the fact that Bitsch and Hogberg [19], Bitsch [20, 24], Dippmann [21] and Näther et al. [18] related their questionnaires and evaluations of the surveys to the available job satisfaction elevation methods which did not come from the agricultural sector. The working description sheet of Neuberger and Allerbeck [25], on which the study of Näther et al. [18] was based, was developed from the industrial and service sectors. The two-factor-theory of Herzberg et al. [26], which served as the basis for the analysis of the interviews of Bitsch [20, 24], Bitsch and Hogberg [19] and Dippmann [21], was developed from studies in the medical sector. Therefore, the research on job satisfaction in agriculture was carried out with measuring and analysis methods from other sectors. That is the reason why specific features of agriculture were not considered in the job satisfaction studies, such as the production of a high-quality final product.

Past agricultural job satisfaction studies did not examine equality or gender aspects in the companies. Thus far, investigations limited themselves to discrepancies between the answers of men and women. That women earn less than men was also stated by Näther et al. [18]. The different perception of the compatibility of family and work between men and women was ascertained by Strauss [27] for employees of milk cattle companies and, independent of the sector, by the Eurofound survey [28]. The dominance of men in the wine-growing sector was confirmed during the search for interview partners. Only one woman, who was 35 years or older and who was employed as a winemaker or a vineyard manager, was found. None of the interviewed people could name other women in comparable positions in the wine-growing sector. However, statistical figures show that women in the wine-growing sector gain in importance. The number of skilled workers in viticulture in Austria rose during the past years from 38 (2006) to 53 (2016) [2]. However, the number of skilled female workers was less than half of the number of male skilled workers [2]. The interviewed women, younger than 30 years, did not know any other women with children in the wine-growing sector and consequently could not fall back on experiences of other women. That is why there are also few employers in wine-growing companies with experiences in maternity protection, parental time and part-time work.

In spite of the problem areas mentioned, the interviewed employees expressed great satisfaction in the majority of the sub-categories of job satisfaction. This observation leads to the development of the hypotheses that employees in viticulture are predominantly satisfied with their jobs. This is in accordance with the results of other studies of agricultural job satisfaction [7, 18].

All results only refer to the small group of high educated, young employees in high positions. To get a broader picture of job satisfaction in the wine industry and to be able to generate general results, employees of different ages, different educational backgrounds and different working positions should have been examined. At the same time due to the great differences of the profiles of this very small group of people, it wasn't possible to compare results within the group. For example there were big differences in duration of employment, in responsability and size of the winery. General statements about a group of interviewpartners were not possible. To compare results in a group, it need more interviewpartners within a small comperable group and different, heterogenous groups. The aim of this survey was not the representation of all employees in wineries, but to give ideas in which direction further research would be important.

6 Conclusion

By the use of qualitative interviews, aspects of job satisfaction could be defined which thus far had not been subject to research in agricultural job satisaction. Previous studies were theory orientated, not created for the agricultural sector or used quantitative methods. Specific aspects for the wine-growing sector which had not been surveyed in agricultural investigations yet were the relation to the final product, the passion for and the interest in wine. However, this seemed to play an essential role for the job satisfaction of viticultural employees. The passion for wine leads to the acceptance of many unsatisfactory aspects of the work.

The factor of influence of equality was not treated in similar studies in agriculture. Generally, in agriculture there exists considerable improvement potential with regard to the equal treatment of employees. Considering a rising need for a skilled workforce in agriculture, agricultural working conditions have to be checked especially regarding gender equality.

Conflict of interest

None to report.