*4.1. The Central Role of Employees*

The employees have a critical role in the FV departments, as they actively manage the causes of food waste and are equipped to take a variety of precautionary measures to avoid and reduce food waste. The results in this study illuminate how complex the work in an FV department is, and highlight the need for well-defined and established operational activities. On a daily basis, employees must take into account the effort of the store to make a high profit, make customers satisfied and keep low waste figures. To handle the contradictory demands, the employees have some mandate to make their own decisions about several activities and find a balance between different needs.

An example of new detailed insights concerns how to make accurate orders, which is not as simple as other studies have suggested [11,15,27], nor have these previous studies appreciated the realities and complexities of this task. This study reveals that the employees have up to ten different factors to consider when making orders, as illustrated in Figure 3. In the ordering process, many decisions are made that can prevent food waste. It is therefore important with time allocated [26] for the ordering process and experienced employees. The results of this paper contribute to better understanding of the role of employees in preventing food waste, and demonstrate the positive consequences of granting members of staff more agency. Other studies [19,23] have highlighted the need for efficient store operations regarding replenishment and price adjustments for products close to expiration. The present study confirms that replenishment and adjusted price are of importance, and additionally, it elaborates on how employees can be involved in several other store operations to avoid and reduce waste. Staff are often portrayed negatively and presented as a root cause of food waste [14,24,25], but our results show the opposite. Employees who have knowledge, experience and mandate contribute actively to the monitoring of food waste and are crucial actors for reducing it, and the recommendation is to support the employees with training and time allocated to execute their tasks. This result is in line with a recent study [55] that highlights the role of training as the second most important strategy for food loss and waste mitigation. Since sustainability work can attract and engage employees [56], strategies and systematic work for reducing food waste can be important for the supermarkets to keep employees.
