The Role of Occupational Health and Safety in the Relationship between Psychological Empowerment and Career Satisfaction

Abstract

Purpose – Nowadays, career satisfaction is one of the worker's expectations and the worker's efficiency inputs. Removing the obstacles in front of career satisfaction is one of the critical success factors in the business. Also, psychological empowerment is one of the ways of increasing career satisfaction. There are a lot of factors in the relationship between psychological empowerment - career satisfaction. It is thought that the work safety is one of them. The present study aims to investigate (1) the direct effects of psychological empowerment on career satisfaction and (2) the moderating role of work safety in the relationship between psychological empowerment and career satisfaction using a public health sector sample. Design/methodology/approach – Theory-based hypotheses are tested with a sample of 420 obtained in 2019 from workers from the public health sector, Antalya/Turkey by using SPSS and AMOS. Findings – The results demonstrated that the moderator effect of work safety perception in the effect of psychological empowerment and its dimensions on career satisfaction exists except for the relationship between perceived control and career satisfaction. That is, work safety perception moderates the effect of psychological empowerment on the career satisfaction of workers. Discussion – The findings have shown that when work safety perception is low, the effect of psychological empowerment on career satisfaction is high in a positive direction. Although this finding is unexpected, in some studies it matches up to the findings. Whereas the existence of work safety in the working environment may cause the effects of other variables to be ignored for career satisfaction, it is thought that behaviors aimed at empowering workers may be perceived more positively by workers. And it can be a motivation tool causing them to be able to ignore many negative conditions in cases when work safety perception is low. Within this context, this finding is unexpected but it can be considered positively.