This research examines the factors associated with job satisfaction among staff in assisted living facilities in Georgia. Overall, I find that staff members in ALFs are satisfied with the work itself, their relationship with coworkers and supervisors, and their job in general. Yet, they are not very satisfied with their pay or their opportunities for promotion. Surprisingly, the medians of JIG and job satisfaction with the work itself, opportunities for promotion, relationship with coworkers, and relationship with supervisors among staff in Georgia ALFs are higher than those of other non-manager workers in the nation. This suggests that the workers in this study may not have
alternative employment opportunities, so they are satisfied with their jobs despite heavy workload and lack of benefits. Another reason may be due to a selection effect. That is, individuals who choose to work in assisted living facilities or other long-term care
settings generally value helping others, and thus, are satisfied with their jobs. However, a lower level of pay satisfaction than the national norm indicates a need for efforts to improve their pay and benefits.
The results reveal that race, urban/rural residence, perceived workload, and perceived autonomy have significant effects on overall job satisfaction (JIG). Age, race, and perceived workload affect satisfaction with the work itself. An interesting finding is that having children is found to be significantly associated with supervision satisfaction, together with race, urban/rural residence, and perceived workload. It may be that staff members with children are less satisfied than those without children because they may
attribute undesirable work schedules or low pay to their supervisors, making it difficult to raise their children.
Although urban/rural residence, education, and perceived workload are found to significantly affect coworker satisfaction, the low R2 value suggests that future research is needed to identify other predictors. The findings show that perceived autonomy is significantly and positively related to promotion satisfaction, together with age,
urban/rural residence, and perceived workload. This indicates that workers who feel they have greater control over their job are more satisfied with their promotion opportunities. One possible explanation is that staff members who feel that they have a high level of autonomy are those who may have been previously promoted and perhaps are more likely to anticipate being promoted in the future.
Race, rural/urban residence, having children, hourly rate, and perceived workload are important predictors of satisfaction with pay. An interesting result is that hourly pay rate is significantly predictive of pay satisfaction, in contrast to overall job satisfaction and its other dimensions. In other words, staff members with a lower hourly rate are less satisfied with pay, but not necessarily less satisfied with their supervisors, coworkers, chances for promotion or the work itself than those with a higher hourly rate. This finding is noteworthy for policy-makers and management that salary increases may increase care workers’ satisfaction with pay but not their satisfaction with other aspects of the job or with the job as a whole.
Support for my hypotheses is mixed. Older staff members are more satisfied with the work itself, but less satisfied with promotion opportunities than their younger
satisfaction. The positive relationship between age and work satisfaction supports Life
cycle theory, suggesting that older workers may be more familiar with their jobs and feel
less pressure to get work done or receive higher benefits, so they are more satisfied than younger workers. A second explanation is possibly because older workers may have reached their career potential and may have more realistic expectations and know better than younger workers the reality of the general absence of promotion opportunities in most ALFs. This finding supports Hypothesis 1. The negative relationship between age and promotion satisfaction, however, tends to reject Hypothesis 1. It may be that older staff members have more years of work experience and have contributed more to their facilities and thus are more likely to anticipate promotion than younger ones.
Race is an important predictor of overall, work, supervision, and pay satisfaction, and whites are more likely to be satisfied than non-whites. Additional analyses (not presented) show that whites are older, have less education, and longer job tenure, yet have higher hourly rates than non-whites. This suggests that whites tend to be satisfied with their current position and do not anticipate changing jobs. In contrast, black
workers, especially those with higher education and more training may expect more, thus, be more dissatisfied with the lack of opportunity than non-whites. Another explanation is that most managers are white, and therefore, non-whites may face racial discrimination in the workplace. However, additional research is needed to verify this explanation. The finding the race predicts supervisor satisfaction but not coworker
Conversely, race does not significantly affect coworker and promotion
satisfaction. In terms of coworker satisfaction, a lack of variance contributes to the lack of significant effect because most staff members (whether they are whites or non-whites)
view their coworkers positively. Furthermore, race is not a predictor of coworker relationships since coworkers tend to be among the same race, thus, may be unlikely to experience race discrimination from them. In contrast, race is a significant predictor of supervisor satisfaction. Therefore, from a policy standpoint, attention needs to be focused on how to reduce race discrimination, especially discrimination from
management in assisted living facilities. For promotion satisfaction, a lack of significant effect may be due to limited promotion opportunities in the long-term care workforce.
Nativity does not have a significant effect on job satisfaction. Additional analyses (not shown) suggest that race accounts for the insignificant effect of nativity on job satisfaction. Once race is removed from the model, nativity significantly predicts job satisfaction. Note that most foreign-born staff members (93%) are non-whites.
Urban/rural residence predicts overall job satisfaction, and satisfaction with supervisor relationships, coworker relationships, promotion opportunities, and pay. Urban workers are simply less satisfied than their rural counterparts with most aspects of their jobs. I suspect the higher level of job satisfaction among rural workers may be due to limited employment alternatives. Another explanation is that all rural facilities are small and workers and supervisors have greater contact and some have known workers or their families personally in the community.
Education is significantly associated with coworker satisfaction. Persons with higher education are less satisfied with their relationships with their coworkers than those with lower education. However, no evidence has been found to support the relationship between education and overall job satisfaction and its other dimensions such as pay satisfaction. The evidence is limited due to two reasons. First, since there is a lack of
variance in educational attainment among care workers, it is difficult to find variations in educational effects on job satisfaction. Second, in a caregiving setting that lacks
promotion opportunities, education may not increase care workers’ chances of getting more benefits. It is important to employ new ways to provide more promotion
opportunities to make workers, in particular, workers with higher education, more satisfied.
It is unclear why marital status is not a significant predictor of overall job satisfaction or its several dimensions. Given that only 40 percent of the study sample is married, further investigation should explore the validity of this finding.
Having children affects supervision and pay satisfaction. Staff members with children are significantly less satisfied than those without children, which supports my hypothesis. Understandably, since staff members with children have more family responsibilities, they are likely to need and expect higher pay and more benefits in terms of receiving understanding and support from their supervisors than those without children. However, it is unclear why having children does not significantly affect other aspects of their job satisfaction. Future research is needed to further understand how having children affects all aspects of their jobs.
The results show that staff members on night and combined shifts are slightly less satisfied with the work itself than those on morning shifts, though not significantly. One reason may be that workers on morning shifts are more likely to interact with
management and get promotion opportunities than those on night and combined shifts, resulting in a higher level of job satisfaction. On the other hand, workers on night shifts may find it difficult to maintain their relationships when their work schedules do not
match those of their family and friends. Also, the work may simply be less interesting, due to a lack of social and rehabilitation activities in the evenings. This implies that administrators and supervisors should find creative ways to improve the work conditions of staff members on night and combined shifts to enhance their level of job satisfaction.
Job tenure has no impact on job satisfaction and its several dimensions, so the results do not support hypothesis 7. I suspect the correlation between age and job tenure may account for its insignificant effects.
Not surprisingly, hourly pay rate is positively related to pay satisfaction, yet, it is not a predictor of overall satisfaction or its other dimensions. This finding suggests a need to raise staff members’ hourly rate to improve their pay satisfaction. However, the results show that staff members with low hourly rates do not necessarily have lower levels of overall, work, promotion, supervision, and coworker satisfaction. This may be due to a lack of other employment opportunities, or it may indicate the greater value workers place on intrinsic factors related to their job satisfaction such as autonomy, workload, and the nature of the care work itself.
Attitudinal characteristics are strong predictors of job satisfaction. Perceived workload is negatively associated with overall job satisfaction and each of its dimensions. Staff members with greater perceived workload are less likely to be satisfied than those with less perceived workload, which supports hypothesis 9. This finding has an
important policy implication: reducing workload could be one of the solutions to improved job satisfaction among staff in assisted living facilities. Therefore, administrators, supervisors, and policy-makers should consider the need for new
strategies such as recruiting new workers and designing new work schedules in order to reduce workload while maintaining high quality of service.
Perceived autonomy also predicts overall and promotion satisfaction. Staff members with a greater level of perceived autonomy are more satisfied with their jobs in general and promotion opportunities than those with a lower level of perceived autonomy. As known, persons who consider job autonomy important are more likely to expect more rewards from their jobs (such as being promoted) than those who do not.
The dependent variables account for 23% of the total explained variance in pay satisfaction. In comparison, the dependent variables explained relatively lower variance for other types of satisfactions, such as satisfaction with coworkers (6%) of the total variance) and with promotion (10%). It may be due to our small sample size and a lack of heterogeneity.
In summary, I find older staff members are more satisfied with the work itself but less satisfied with promotion opportunities than their younger counterparts. Race is an important predictor of overall, work, supervision, and pay satisfaction, and whites are more likely to be satisfied than non-whites. Nativity does not have a significant effect on job satisfaction. Urban workers are less satisfied with overall job, supervisor
relationships, coworker relationships, promotion opportunities, and pay than their rural counterparts. Persons with higher education are less satisfied with their relationships with their coworkers than those with lower education. Staff members with children are less satisfied with supervisor relationships, pay, and promotion opportunities than those without children, which supports my hypothesis. As expected, workers with higher pay are more satisfied with pay than those with lower pay. Perceived workload is negatively
associated with overall job satisfaction and each of its dimensions. Workers with a greater level of perceived autonomy are more satisfied with their jobs in general and promotion opportunities than those with a lower level of perceived autonomy.
This study makes several significant contributions to our understanding of job satisfaction of direct care workers in assisted living. First, to my knowledge, this study is the first to examine the predictors of overall job satisfaction and its various dimensions separately. The results show that the predictors of overall, work, supervision, coworker, promotion, and pay satisfaction are different. Accordingly, policy-makers, administrators, and supervisors should employ different strategies to improve staff members’ job
satisfaction. For example, since hourly rate only predicts pay satisfaction, it may be more important to initiate more interaction and communication among workers (e.g., staff lunches) to increase their levels of coworker satisfaction rather than simply to increase their pay.
Second, by examining the predictors of overall job satisfaction in ALFs and its various dimensions, this study has deepened our understanding of the most salient predictors of job satisfaction among staff in assisted living. Ideally, we could employ policies and improve interactions between management and care workers to increase retention and decrease turnover. Third, examining the difference of the impact of race on job satisfaction and that of nativity contributes to the literature of racism in the workforce and strengthens our awareness of racial stratification in society. The finding that whites are more satisfied than non-whites suggests that employers may consider improving the working conditions of non-whites and preventing racial discrimination in the workplace. Fourth, the data also allow me to establish the reliability of the JDI and JIG scales and
thereby make contributions to the field of psychology, organizational sociology, and gerontology. The JIG and JDI scales are reliable and can be used to advance or generate more research in these fields. Finally, since all of the respondents are women, examining their job satisfaction contributes to our understanding of women’s working conditions, sense of empowerment, overall life satisfaction, and social status. Their low levels of pay and promotion satisfaction need more attention in order to improve their social status in the society.
I acknowledge the limitations of this study. First, the secondary data used for analyses do not include certain measures that warrant additional investigation as
independent variables. For example, marital status is the only variable to measure family support. In addition, I can not take into account the effects of other forms of social support such as religious activities. Second, because this study is limited to Georgia, caution should be taken when generalizing the findings. Third, because the study is based on cross-sectional survey data, I can not differentiate the cohort effect and age effect. Longitudinal data are needed for future research to better understand the
dynamics of job values and attitudes among staff members in LTC. Fourth, this analysis only uses quantitative data and does not include qualitative data. Yet, additional
qualitative data in the larger study may provide insights on how to explain some of the findings and verify some claims. For instance, qualitative data may shed light on why whites are more satisfied than non-whites.
Finally, this research only includes individual-level variables and does not include facility-level and community-level variables. Therefore, I can not conduct multivariate analyses. Several facility-level variables such as facility size, not-for-profit status, and
chain status have been identified as being associated with turnover in ALFs (Banaszak- Holl & Hines, 1996; Konetzka et al., 2005). For example, some care workers take pride in working in a large or chain facility. They consider the opportunity of working in a prestigious facility as an indicator of capability and social status. Thus, even if they are not satisfied with supervision and promotion opportunities, they may still report that they are satisfied with their jobs.
Future research is needed to address all theses issues in order to deepen our understanding of how to improve job satisfaction and job retention on a facility, community, and even societal level.
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