Abstract
BackgroundOur overarching study objective is to further our understanding of the work psychology of Health Support Workers (HSWs) in long-term care and home and community care settings in Ontario, Canada. Specifically, we seek novel insights about the relationships among aspects of these workers’ work environments, their work attitudes, and work outcomes in the interests of informing the development of human resource programs to enhance elder care.MethodsWe conducted a path analysis of data collected via a survey administered to a convenience sample of Ontario HSWs engaged in the delivery of elder care over July–August 2015.ResultsHSWs’ work outcomes, including intent to stay, organizational citizenship behaviors, and performance, are directly and significantly related to their work attitudes, including job satisfaction, work engagement, and affective organizational commitment. These in turn are related to how HSWs perceive their work environments including their quality of work life (QWL), their perceptions of supervisor support, and their perceptions of workplace safety.ConclusionsHSWs’ work environments are within the power of managers to modify. Our analysis suggests that QWL, perceptions of supervisor support, and perceptions of workplace safety present particularly promising means by which to influence HSWs’ work attitudes and work outcomes. Furthermore, even modest changes to some aspects of the work environment stand to precipitate a cascade of positive effects on work outcomes through work attitudes.
Highlights
Our overarching study objective is to further our understanding of the work psychology of Health Support Workers (HSWs) in long-term care and home and community care settings in Ontario, Canada
The research question that we address here is: What are the relationships among perceptions of the work environment, work attitudes, and work outcomes of HSWs engaged in providing care to older Canadians in long-term care and home and community care settings in Ontario, Canada? This question has relevance to these workers, to their clients/residents, and to managers and policy decision makers engaged in LTC
Response rate A total of 1616 surveys were requested or accessed: 180 paper surveys sent to health and community care (HCC) agencies; survey link accessed by 170 HSWs employed by HCC agencies; 600 paper surveys sent to LTC homes; and survey link accessed by 666 HSWs employed by LTC homes
Summary
Our overarching study objective is to further our understanding of the work psychology of Health Support Workers (HSWs) in long-term care and home and community care settings in Ontario, Canada. Between 80,000 and 100,000 unregulated HSWs are employed in Ontario, the most populous province of Canada, with 57% working in the LTC sector and 34% in the health and community care (HCC) sector [4]. In Canada, HSWs are unregulated and efforts to organize and track these workers, in the interests of engaging them in the continued development of their roles and contributing to evidence-informed discussions on health human resources, vary markedly across provinces and territories. In Ontario, recent efforts to develop a registry of HSWs were discontinued and there remains no means by which to communicate broadly to these workers, to solicit their inputs into discussions regarding the sustainability of elder care, or to engage them in research
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