For an academic but accessible take on what motivates – or demotivates – direct care workers, check out this month’s issue of The Gerontologist. The main focus is a section titled Direct Care Worker Job Satisfaction and Retention, which includes four reports on the factors that make direct care workers like or dislike their jobs.
“Intrinsic Job Satisfaction, Overall Satisfaction, and Intention to Leave the Job Among Nursing Assistants in Nursing Homes” reports that nursing assistants who feel supported by their supervisors and satisfied with their pay are likeliest to be satisfied with their jobs. “Other job characteristics, such as the workload structuring the time to assist residents with ADLs, also seem important aspect of NAs’ work experience [that are] amenable to change,” note authors Frederic H. Decker and colleagues.
In “Nursing Home Work Practices and Nursing Assistants’ Job Satisfaction,” Christine E. Bishop and colleagues analyze data from the recently released 2004 National Nursing Assistant Survey, finding that workers are more satisfied when they earn higher wages, get paid personal leave and sick days, and have enough time to complete their work (that last point is also associated with higher staffing levels). Also associated with higher satisfaction are feeling respected and valued by employers, having good relationships with supervisors, having challenging work, not being subjected to mandatory overtime, and working in a home where food is not delivered to residents on trays.
“A Dual-Driver Model of Retention and Turnover in the Direct Care Workforce” argues that researchers must find a new way to measure turnover and retention in order to produce data that employers can use to reduce the first and improve the second. Specifically, say Vikal Mittal and colleagues, researchers must study turnover and retention separately rather than assuming that any factor that reduces one will automatically increase the other. Research should also account for the “spiritual, emotional, and other personal aspects” of workers’ lives in their calculations, they say, rather than looking solely at facility-level and job-based factors. The authors identified five major themes associated with turnover and six associated with retention.
In “Quits and Job Changes Among Home Care Workers in Maine: The Role of Wages, Hours, and Benefits,” Lisa Morris notes that cash-strapped home care employers usually try to improve management and supervisory practices rather than wages or benefits when looking to improve direct care worker satisfaction and retention. These changes can help, she reports, but giving workers higher wages, more hours, and better benefits is significantly more effective. “Although improving compensation presents budgetary challenges to home care agencies, for this low-income workforce, the ability to earn higher wages and work more hours may be more of an imperative than improved work conditions,” she concludes.
Elise Nakhnikian
Communications Director
Direct Care Alliance
