Stress, Job Satisfaction and Social Support free essay sample

?Stress, Job Satisfaction and Social Support: What Relationship do they have to Workplace Turnover Intentions? Amy Levin, MSW, PhD California State University Northridge Abstract This study tested a theoretical model depicting the relationships between diversity characteristics, organizational climate and personal outcome variables on intention to leave among child welfare workers. In a cross sectional design, a sample of 418 child welfare workers was drawn from a large public agency. In addition to diversity and demographic covariates, measures included organizational stress, social support, organizational fairness, inclusion, wellbeing, organizational commitment, job satisfaction and intention to leave. Results support the notion that diverse individual characteristics together with stressful, unjust, exclusionary and non-supportive organizational climate negatively influence individual wellbeing and lead to lack of job satisfaction and organizational commitment, which in turn lead to intentions of quitting. The findings provide empirical support to the notion that the exclusion and lack of fairness experienced by employees who are diverse combined with the stressful environment and lack of support, decrease job satisfaction and organizational commitment and increase intention to leave. Key Words: Diversity Characteristics, Organizational Climate, Turnover 1. Introduction: This study explored the relationships between diversity characteristics, organizational climate and personal outcome variables on intention to leave of 418 child welfare workers in a large public agency. Child welfare departments throughout the United States have historically faced difficulties in retaining social workers and other human service professionals. The work done in child welfare is essential and significantly affects the lives of the most at risk people in our society†¦poor children, women, culturally diverse families, the abused and neglected, and the homeless. Such child welfare agencies are the primary locales responsible for ensuring children’s safety from abuse, neglect and exploitation. Stressful aspects of the job include excessive workloads caused by unwieldy caseloads, limited contact with the clients served, overwhelming paperwork and poor working conditions. Added to these administrative challenges are the difficulties associated with working with involuntary clients and the tremendous duty of protecting the most vulnerable of society’s citizens. There is a great deal of responsibility placed on these workers to make certain that the children served will not be put in harms way. A seasoned and cohesive workforce is an integral component in providing high quality services to such people who utilize the child welfare system. This research project was conducted in order to examine the factors that are important in determining worker intention to leave the child welfare system, in hopes of developing methods to increase retention rates. Although retention is widely discussed in the literature, multiple antecedents to intention to leave are rarely examined together. This research explored the relationship between multiple variables and the impact that they have on a worker’s intention to leave the organization. This problem was chosen for study because of the significant consequences that follow when intention to leave is not addressed. It was found that previous studies identified lack of social support (primarily supervisory support), lack of job satisfaction and high levels of stress as the predominant precursors to an employee’s intention to leave the organization; however, few, if any studies examine these three independent variables simultaneously. After conducting a literature review, several research questions were derived. Others were formulated based on a lack of findings in the literature pertaining to certain variables that I believe were important to include. The current study explored the first wave of data along with a qualitative analysis of interviews to more closely examine the relationship between individual characteristics (e. g. diversity), organizational culture (the attitude shared by employees about their work environment) and worker intention to leave. The study used mixed methods, with the objective of assessing a conceptual model that would test the relationship between both visible (i. e. , age) and invisible (i. e. , education) worker diversity, supervisor support, job satisfaction, and stress with intention to leave the organization. The goal has been ultimately to improve the organizational climate of child welfare agencies, which in turn, will contribute to improved outcomes for children. 1. Hypotheses: It was hypothesized that there is a relationship between diversity characteristics and intention to leave the organization, such as: a. There is no difference between men and women in their intention to leave. b. Those who are Latino are more likely to intend to leave than employees of other ethnicities due to the need for bilingual Spanish speaking workers in Los Angeles. c. Those who are older (age 35 and older) are less likely to intend to leave than employees who are younger (under age 35). . Those who are in management p ositions are less likely to intend to leave than those who are individual contributors. e. Those who have a bachelor’s degree are less likely to intend to leave than those who have a master’s degree or higher. f. Those who have been with the agency for a longer tenure (more than 2 years) are less likely to intend to leave than those who have been with the agency for two years or less. It was also hypothesized that there is a relationship between diversity, supervisory support, job satisfaction, stress and intention to leave:  Those employees who perceive the organization as more supportive of diversity, have a greater sense of social support from their supervisor, are more satisfied, and are less stressed are less likely to intend to leave than those who feel less tolerance surrounding diversity, less supervisory support, are less satisfied, and are more stressed. 2. Methodology: This study utilized a combination of cross sectional and longitudinal designs with mixed method – both qualitative and quantitative analyses. Three waves of data were collected with measurements taken at six-month intervals; however, only the first wave has been analyzed in depth for the current study. The conceptual model was tested, utilizing cross-sectional data from the first wave and information about actual turnover from the second wave. The longitudinal nature of the study helps to establish causality, and helps to ascertain whether intentions to stay in the organization are indeed fulfilled. A subsample of 33 participants agreed to participate in the in-depth interview. Participants were promised confidentiality so that if they were the only person in their department with characteristics unique to the office, their identifying information would not be revealed. The researcher was interested in learning more detail about the workplace environment, specifically levels of perceived stress, job satisfaction, social support and intentions to leave, and felt that face to face interviews could facilitate a better understanding of the climate in a number of regional child welfare offices. 2. 1. Sample: Single-sample t-tests and binomial tests were conducted to determine whether the study sample was representative of the population of 3724 children’s services employees at the agency. The following variables were compared: age, gender, race/ethnicity, agency tenure, agency position, and level of education. The study sample differs from the agency population on all variables except for gender (binomial test yielded p = . 079). Specifically, workers in the study sample were slightly younger than the population as a whole (39 versus 42 years; t = -5. 789, 411 df, p = . 000).