PERCEIVED SUPERVISOR RESPECT, JOB SATISFACTION, AND WORD OF MOUTH RECRUITMENT AMONG CERTIFIED NURSING ASSISTANTS

Abstract

Long-term care (LTC) facilities across the United States are suffering from a shortage of Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs). These direct care workers are vital to the success of the LTC facilities, as they provide the majority of the hands-on care needed by facility residents. Implementing new methods of recruitment is a possible solution to this shortage. One unexplored avenue for CNA recruitment is through word of mouth (WOM) communication. Past research identifies positive WOM communication about an organization as an effective method for increasing potential applicants’ degree of attraction to an organization (Van Hoye & Lievens, 2009). A commonly cited antecedent to positive WOM behavior is job satisfaction. Because the perception that one is respected by one’s supervisors is an important element of CNAs’ job satisfaction, we hypothesized that perceived respect may mediate the association of job satisfaction with WOM. Specifically, the current study utilized self-report measures from the 2004 National Nursing Assistant Survey (n = 2466) to test the indirect effect of job satisfaction on the relationship between CNAs’ perceived supervisor respect and WOM communication (operationalized as willingness to recommend the facility as a place to work). Analyses using a bootstrapping method and PROCESS macro (Hayes, 2013) and controlling for relevant covariates indicated that job satisfaction partially mediates the relationship between perceived supervisor respect and WOM communication. Results suggest that interventions to improve CNAs’ job satisfaction, and particularly perceived respect by supervisors, may lead to an increase in positive WOM communication about LTC facilities to potential employees.