PII: S0190-7409(14)00098-X
DOI: doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2014.03.005
Reference: CYSR 2374
To appear in: Children and Youth Services Review
Received date: 7 February 2014 Accepted date: 7 March 2014
Please cite this article as: Kruzich, J.M., Mienko, J.A. & Courtney, M.E., Individual and Work Group Influences on Turnover Intention Among Public Child Welfare Workers: The Effects of Work Group Psychological Safety, Children and Youth Services Review (2014),
doi: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2014.03.005
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Individual and Work Group Influences on Turnover Intention
Among Public Child Welfare Workers:
The Effects of Work Group Psychological Safety
1. Introduction
High turnover rates and high levels of turnover intention have characterized social work in
child welfare settings for several decades (Nittoli, 2003). Findings from the federal Child and
Family Service Reviews (CFSR) suggest that retention problems negatively affect outcomes
for children and families resulting in a lack of continuity in relationships between workers and
families, a limited focus on child safety, and a negative impact on the timeliness of decisions
about safe and stable placements (GAO, 2003).
As the single most consistent predictor of turnover (Cho & Lewis, 2012; Dalton, Johnson
& Daily, 1999), intention to leave is important not only as a precursor to turnover but as
an indicator of a workforce that may not be working at its full potential (Mor Barak, Levin,
Nissly & Lane, 2006). Employees with unrealized turnover intentions are likely to resort
to other types of withdrawal behavior including absenteeism (Chang et al., 2013). Tham
(2007), in a survey of public child welfare workers in Sweden, found that 48 percent of the
302 workers indicated an intention to leave in the coming year. Strand & Dore (2009),
studying public child welfare staff in a state with a relatively low turnover rate of 8 percent,
found that 18 percent of the work force intended to leave in the next year and an additional
44 percent indicated they would prefer to leave the agency but salary and benefits were a
strong incentive to stay.
Findings from retention studies have failed to find demographic characteristics including
age, gender, race/ethnicity and education consistently related to retention. Previous study
findings have been mixed, with some studies discovering employees with social work degrees
are more likely to intend to stay (Ellett, Ellett & Rugutt, 2003; Scannapieco, Connell-Carrick
& Painter, 2007; Shim, 2010) while others have found employees with MSW degrees less likely
to intend to stay (Nissly, Mor Barak & Levin, 2005; Smith, 2005), and yet others detecting
no relationship between educational level and retention. Faller et al. (2010) found minority
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while others studies found no relationship between race and work withdrawal (DePanfilis &
Zlotnik, 2008) and still others concluding that Caucasian/White child welfare staff were less
likely to stay (Shim, 2010).
Individual characteristics consistently related to intention to leave, and its opposite
inten-tion to stay, are work attitudes including job satisfacinten-tion, (Mor Barak et al., 2006; Mor Barak,
Nissly & Levin, 2001; Moynihan & Pandey, 2007; Weaver, Chang, Clark & Rhee, 2007;
Freund, 2005; Auerbach, McGowan, Ausberger, Strolin-Goltzman & Schudrich, 2010),
or-ganizational commitment (Boyas, Wind & Kang, 2012; Faller, Grabarek & Ortega, 2010;
Mor Barak et al., 2006), and burnout (Drake & Yadama, 1996; Kim & Lee, 2009 Huang,
Chuang & Lin, 2003; Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004; Strolin et al., 2005; Kim & Stoner, 2008;
Ducharme, Knudsen & Roman, 2007; Boyas et al., 2012; Kim et al., 2012). Self-efficacy,
in-cluded in a handful of studies, has also regularly been found to related to turnover intention
(Chen & Scannapieco, 2010; Ellett, 2009; Ellett, Ellis, Westbrook & Dews, 2007; Kim & Lee,
2009; Weaver, Chang, Clark & Rhee, 2007).
Psychological climate refers to individuals’ perceptions of their work environment and
how these perceptions drive their behavior and attitudes (James & James, 1989; Schneider,
2006). Two psychological climate measures found to consistently predict turnover intentions
are perceived supervisor support (PSS) (Dickinson & Perry, 2003; Ellett et al., 2007; Nissly
et al., 2005; Fakunmoju, Woodruff, Kim, LeFevre & Hong, 2010; Mor Barak, Travis, Pyun
& Xie, 2009; Tham, 2007; Faller et al., 2010; Strand & Dore, 2009; Landsman, 2001) and
perceived organizational support (POS) (Ellett, 2000; Tham, 2007; Rhoades & Eisenberger,
2002; Gillet, Gagn´e, Sauvag`ere & Fouquereau, 2012; Riggle et al., 2009; DePanfilis & Zlotnik,
2008).
While some studies of turnover intention in human service settings use conceptual
mod-els that explicitly consider both individual and contextual factors, with few exceptions (e.g.
Glisson & Green, 2006; Jinnett & Alexander, 1999; Smith, 2005), all work environment
char-acteristics and individual attitudes are examined only at the individual level (Bliese & Jex,
2002). Failing to control for clustering at the level of the work unit or other organizational
levels limit our ability to explain child welfare staff attitudes and behaviors (Bliese & Jex,
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lead to biased results due to dependence of observations, an especially problematic outcome
in the estimation of uncertainty (e.g. p-values).
The present study builds on existing research and theory to explain staff retention in
child welfare. It contributes to the workforce retention literature by (1) incorporating a
model that assesses the influence of both individual and work group factors in child welfare
professionals’ intentions to stay in their current position, (2) introduces psychological safety
as a potential predictor of turnover intention, and (3) provides evidence for the utility of the
psychological safety construct beyond multidisciplinary teams in health care setting. The
focus of this analysis is on the effects of perceived organizational support (POS), perceived
supervisor support (PSS), and work unit psychological safety on front-line child welfare
worker’s intention to stay.
2. Theoretical Background
Empirical and theoretical support for the association of psychological climate measures,
work group psychological safety and worker intention to stay are summarized below.
2.1. Psychological Climate Variables and Retention
An important distinction has been made between psychological climate (individual
per-ceptions of the work environment) and organizational climate, including organizational work
groups, and departments (collective perceptions of the work environment) (James & Jones,
1974). While general agreement exists on how psychological climate is defined, there is no
consensus on the content and specific dimensions comprising the construct (Parker et al.,
2003; Carr et al., 2003; Jones & James, 1979) nor whether climate is best conceived of as
a global or a facet-specific construct. Regardless, a wide range of facet-specific and global
work climate measures including justice, trust, civility, and employee voice have been found
to be related to staff retention.
2.2. Perceived Organizational Support (POS)
Organizational support theory (Eisenberger, Hungtington, Hutchison & Sowa, 1986;
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to assess the organization’s readiness to reward increased efforts, employees form general
be-liefs concerning how much the organizations’ leadership values their contributions and cares
about their well-being. Such perceived organizational support is assumed to be based on how
favorable an employee has been treated by the organization in the past (Eisenberger et al.,
1986). Based on the norm of reciprocity, greater perceived organizational support is expected
to result in greater affective attachment and feelings of obligation to the organization (Shore
& Wayne, 1993).
Current studies in social service settings provide evidence that perceived organizational
support plays an important role in the commitment process, helping to explain how basic
work experiences influence affective commitment and, ultimately, intention to stay. Tham
(2007) examined several attitudes among child welfare workers and found the largest
differ-ences between public child welfare workers who intended to stay and those who intended
to leave were in how they described the human resource orientation within the
organiza-tion. Specifically, those who intended to leave seldom felt rewarded for a job well done or
well taken care of, and perceived management as less interested in their health and
well-being than those who intended to stay. Two additional studies in public child welfare found
perceived organizational support, operationalized as administrative provision of adequate
resources to meet client needs and sensitivity to the needs and feelings of staff, to be a
sig-nificant predictor of intention to remain employed in child welfare (Ellett, 2009; Westbrook
et al., 2012). A third study in a public child welfare setting found no relationship between
job retention and organizational support (Smith, 2005).
Studies in the business literature provide further support for the relationship of perceived
organizational support to employee commitment. Rhoades & Eisenberger (2002), in their
meta-analysis, found perceived organizational support was negatively related to withdrawal
behaviors such as absenteeism, tardiness and turnover. Perceptions of supportive human
resources practices (e.g. participation in decision making, fairness of rewards, and growth
opportunities) have also been found to contribute to the development of perceived
organiza-tional support, and perceived organizaorganiza-tional support was negatively related to withdrawal
(Allen et al., 2003). Eisenberger, Stinglhamber, Vandenberghe, Sucharski & Rhoades (2002)
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about their well-being showed increased perceived organizational support, which in turn was
related to decreased turnover. Finally, a subsequent meta analysis provided additional
sup-port with perceived organizational supsup-port accounting for nearly 25 percent of the variance
in intention to leave (Riggle et al., 2009).
2.3. Perceived Supervisor Support (PSS)
Just as employees form global perceptions concerning their valuation by the
organiza-tion (POS), they also develop perceporganiza-tions of the degree to which supervisors value their
contributions and care about their well-being (PSS) (Walumbwa et al., 2011). Child
wel-fare studies consistently conclude that supportive supervision is associated with turnover
intention, with the level of supervisory support significantly and inversely related to public
child welfare workers’ intentions to leave. Consistent with these findings, Dickinson & Perry
(2003) found PSS predicted intention to remain employed. Scannapieco & Connell-Corrick
(2003) compared workers who stayed at the agency and those who left, and found those who
stayed spent more time with their supervisors than those who left. Thus, results from
mul-tiple studies indicate that supervisors’ behavior has considerable potential to affect climate
perceptions; perceptions that can influence employee’s intention to stay.
2.4. Team Psychological Safety
Team psychological safety is defined as a shared belief that the team is a safe environment
for interpersonal risk taking (Edmondson, 1999). Psychologically safe teams are
character-ized by interpersonal trust, respect for the competence of all team members, and care and
concern about members as people. Psychological safety does not mean positive affect or
mutual liking but rather, a sense of confidence that the interpersonal consequences of
well-intentioned risk will not be negative (Edmondson & Woolley, 2006). Psychological safety
has been found to influence work engagement (Vogelgesang, 2008; Rathert, Ishqaidef & May,
2009; May, Gilson & Harter, 2004), team learning (Edmondson, 1999; Schaubroeck et al.,
2011), involvement in continuous quality improvement efforts (Nembhard & Edmondson,
2006), and patient safety (Rathert et al., 2009).
Studies, primarily conducted in health care settings, affirm that employees’ perceptions of
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the degree of psychological safety. Leader behaviors identified as antecedents’ to
psycholog-ical safety are leader inclusiveness, words and deeds exhibited that invite and appreciate
others’ contributions in work groups (Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006) with inconsistency in
organizational conditions such as rewards, values, and evaluation systems predicting lower
psychological safety (Lee et al., 2004).
A review of business and human service management literature identified only one study
that considered the influence of work unit psychological safety on turnover intention.
Cal-lister (2006), investigated whether perceptions of department climate affected 308 science
and engineering faculty members’ intentions to quit. Departmental affective climate was
measured by aggregating four facets, one of which was psychological safety, and found a
strong direct effect on intention to leave. In studies of a highly related construct, trust was
found to be negatively related to intention to quit Dirks & Ferrin (2002) and mediates the
relationship between work-group incivility and turnover intentions (Miner-Rubino & Reed,
2010).
2.5. Conceptual Model and Research Hypotheses
Based on a review of the literature, the hypothesized conceptual model links psychological
climate measures with work unit climate. In this model psychological climate is represented
by two dimensions-perceptions of supervision quality and human resource orientation.
Con-sistent with other studies, it was hypothesized that psychological climate measures would
be positively related to work group psychological safety (H1). Also employees experience
of work group psychological safety was expected to fully mediate the influence of
supervi-sor quality and human resource primacy with employees having higher levels of work group
psychological safety having higher intentions to stay (H2). We also hypothesize an indirect
effect of psychological climate on worker intention to stay (H3).
3. Methods
3.1. Sample
The sample for this study was drawn from a population of public child welfare social
implementa-ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT
tion of a statewide practice model for the child welfare system. All direct service workers
employed by the state were included in the survey. Workers received an email note from the
agency director informing them of the survey and asking them to participate. Direct service
workers were defined as any worker with case management responsibilities focused on the
investigation of allegations of child abuse or neglect, family preservation activities stemming
from an investigation of child abuse or neglect, or family reunification activities resulting
from the placement of a child in out-of-home care.
Workers were informed that the survey was a part of the evaluation of the practice model
and that they were expected to complete the survey as part of their job. Subsequently they
were contacted by the agency’s research office and directed towards the web survey and were
also told that offices that met a target response rate (90 percent) would be given a small
incentive payment by the agency that could be used for office social activities. Research office
staff followed up directly with workers who had not completed the survey and informed unit
supervisors of their unit response rate; supervisors were not informed of which workers had
completed the survey. Social worker surveys were collected via Survey Monkey, a web-based
survey tool that allows for the creation and deployment of survey instruments as well as the
extraction of data from these instruments. Overall, the response rate for all social workers
in the agency (direct and indirect service workers) was 96 percent (n=1479). This number
includes workers who were not assigned to direct service roles and were thus not a part of
this analysis (n=103). Administrative data was used for post hoc matching of social workers
in order to categorize respondents into supervisory work units. Some workers were not able
to be matched to a supervisory unit and were also excluded from this analysis (n=226).
Listwise deletion was used to exclude workers who did not respond to all of the identified
measurements and control variables (n=110). Based on these criteria, 1040 of the responding
social workers nested in 239 supervisory units were included in the study.
3.2. Measures
Workers responding to the survey items provided basic demographic information such
as age, gender, race, program areas (e.g. child protection, permanency planning, etc.),
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addressing organizational psychological climate, psychological safety, and intention to stay
in the organization.
Psychological climate measures were assessed using the QPS General Nordic
Question-naire for Psychological and Social Factors at Work (Lindstr¨om et al., 2000; Dallner, 2000) a
tool developed to facilitate comparative epidemiological and work intervention studies. The
QPS Nordic focuses simultaneously on task, organizational, and individual level factors and
combines characteristics that have been traditionally measured by job stress and job redesign
focused methods, such as the Job Content Questionnaire (JCQ) (Karasek et al., 1985) and
the Job Diagnostic Survey (JDS) (Hackman & Oldham, 1975).
3.2.1. Perceived Organizational Support (POS)
Perceived organizational support involves employees’ global views about the extent to
which their supervisor values their contributions and cares about their well-being. Perceived
organizational support was measured using the three item human resource primacy sub-scale
of the QPS Nordic General Nordic Questionnaire cited above. A representative item from
the sub-scale reads as follows: “Workers are rewarded (money, encouragement) for a job well
done”. Cronbach’sα for the sub-scale was .82.
3.2.2. Perceived Supervisor Support (PSS)
PSS was originally conceptualized through two sub-scales from the QPS Nordic
Ques-tionnaire cited above: Quality of Supervision (three items), and Empowering leadership
(two items). The Quality of Supervision sub-scale assesses the extent to which leadership
is supportive, fair, and empowering. A sample item is, “If needed, can you get support
and help with your work from your immediate superior?” The empowering leadership
sub-scale assesses the extent to which supervisors encourage participation in decision-making. A
representative item from the sub-scale reads as follows: “Does your immediate supervisor
encourage you to participate in important decisions?” The results of preliminary
confirma-tory factor analysis (using the sample outlined above) suggested that these sub-scales should
be collapsed into a single 5 item factor. Chronbach’s α for the combined sub-scale was .91.
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3.2.3. Team Psychological Safety (TPS)Psychological safety was measured using the scale developed by Edmondson (1999). All
seven of the original measures for psychological safety were included in the current survey and
no modifications were made to any of the items on the psychological safety measurement
scale. The current survey measured psychological safety similarly to the Nordic derived
scales using a 5-point Likert scale with items ranging from 1 = never to 5 = always. This
measurement scale is a slight variation from the original Edmondson scale which utilized
a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = never to 7 = always. This change was made to
maintain congruence with the rest of the survey measurements. A representative item from
this scale is as follows: “If you make a mistake in this unit, it is often held against you.”
The Cronbach’sα for psychological safety was .81.
3.2.4. Intention to Stay (ITS)
Turnover intentions served as the dependent variable of the study and used the same
measures as Moynihan & Pandey (2007) in their study of turnover intention in twelve
hu-man service organizations. Two items were used: “I often look for job opportunities outside
this organization”, and “I would be very happy to spend the rest of my career with this
organization”. These items were each scored with a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 =
strongly agree to 5 = strongly disagree. Item (1) was reverse coded such that the
measure-ment reflected an overall intention to stay with the organization. Cronbach’sα for turnover
intention was .75.
3.2.5. Control Variables
Based on our review of the literature several key control variables were identified as
important in our analysis of workers’ intention to stay with the agency. We specifically
included the age of the worker, and whether a worker had completed a graduate degree.
In addition we included minority status (i.e. non-white), professional social work training
(obtained a BA, BSW, or MSW), and at whether a worker was employed in child protection
or some other child welfare program. The program variable was included because child
protection investigative work is qualitatively different than other program areas in child
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and conflict inherent in investigative work. Various two-way interactions between control
variables were assessed as a part of this analysis. All interactions had negligible effects
on the parameter estimates and fit indices in our model. For the sake of simplicity and
interpretation, we have chosen a model with no interactions as our final model.
3.3. Analysis Process
The first step of our analysis involved a review of descriptive statistics for our main
measurements and control variables. These statistics are displayed in Table 1. Median
values for all scales are displayed along the diagonal of the table. We calculated median
values instead of means due to the ordinal nature of our data. Mean values are calculated
for control variables which yields an average value for age and a proportion for all other
binary control variables. Spearman correlation coefficients and the associated significance
levels are also displayed in the table. In addition to these descriptive statistics we assessed
the intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) for all of our measurements to determine the
extent to which clustering was present at the supervisory unit level.
The next step in our analysis involved the completion of a confirmatory factor analysis
(CFA) to assess the proposed measurement model. As indicated above, the results of the
CFA suggested that quality of supervision and empowering leadership sub-scales should be
collapsed into a single measurement, supportive and empowering leadership. The rest of
the proposed measurement model (i.e. psychological safety, intention to stay, and human
resource primacy) was confirmed by the CFA. The results of our descriptive analysis and the
CFA led us to test the proposed theoretical relationships using a structural equation model
(SEM). Parameter estimates were calculated using the weighted least squares means and
variance algorithm as implemented in Mplus. This algorithm was chosen due to the ordinal
nature of our manifest variables.
4. Results
4.1. Sample Description
The majority of respondents in the study sample were white (71 percent), over the age
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9 workers with a mean of 4.4 and a median of 4. About 53 percent of the sample had
completed a graduate degree and 68 indicated that they had received a social work degree.
Approximately 27 percent of the sample indicated that they were providing child protection
services as opposed to other child welfare service areas (e.g. permanency planning, etc.).
4.2. ICC Results
The results of our ICC analysis indicated significant group-level clustering in the
mea-surements of human resource primacy (ICC = .06, F = 1.35, p < .01), supportive and
empowering leadership (ICC = .16, F = 1.93, p < .01), and psychological safety (ICC =
.22, F = 2.31, p < .01). No significant clustering was observed in the turnover intention
construct (ICC = .03, F = 1.13, ns). Given that our primary interest in this analysis was
to better understand intention to stay, we decided to still test a single-level SEM. However,
given that it is still important to account for the group-level clustering of our other
measure-ment variables, we use a sandwich estimator to calculate the standard errors in our model.
In this way, we do not seek to answer specific questions about the unit-level relationships
between our measurement variables. However, we do control for the non-independence of
observations suggested by our ICC analysis and ensure that we can place a high degree of
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8. GDR -.02(ns) -.06(ns) .00(ns) .00(ns) -.12*** .02(ns) .04(ns) —
9. PGM -.05(ns) -.01.03 -.09** .01(ns) -.03(ns) .02(ns) .00(ns) -.05(ns) —
10. RAC -.01(ns) .00(ns) -.09** -.07* -.09** -.01(ns) .03(ns) .00(ns) .03(ns) —
Median 4.2 2.3 4 3.5 41.8 0.68 0.53 0.77 0.27 0.29
Notes: SEL = supportive and empowering leadership, HRP = human resource primacy, TPS = team
psychological safety, ITS = intention to stay, AGE = worker age, PRF = professional affiliation (i.e.
social work degree) flag, EDU = graduate degree flag, GDR = worker gender, PGM = investigative
work flag, RAC = minority status.
* p<.05; ** p<.01; *** p<.001
Table 1: Descriptive Statistics and Correlation Coefficients
4.3. SEM Results
The results of the SEM model are shown graphically in Figure 1. Unstandardized
param-eter estimates are displayed in Table 2. As is standard in SEM depictions, latent variables are
represented as circles and manifest variables are displayed as squares or rectangles. Model
fit was evaluated using the standards identified by Hu & Bentler (1999) where a root mean
square of approximation (RMSEA)≤.06 and comparative fit (CFI) and Turker Lewis (TLI)
indices ≥ .95 are all indicative of a good model fit. The model presented here has an
es-timated CFI of .97 and a TLI of .96. The eses-timated RMSEA is .06. These indices are an
improvement over other models fit to our data in which supportive and empowering
lead-ership and human resource primacy were only partially mediated by psychological safety.
Thus, based on the Hu & Bentler (1999) standards, the model presented here (i.e. a model
in which psychological safety fully mediates human resource primacy as well as supportive
and empowering leadership) appears to have an acceptable fit to our data.
Our hypothesized conceptual model predicted that psychological climate measures would
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that the relationship between supportive and empowering leadership and psychological safety
is positive and statistically significant (B1 =.52). Similarly, the relationship between human
resource primacy and psychological safety is positive and statistically significant (B2 =.16).
We also hypothesized that the relation between psychological climate measures and turnover
intention would be fully mediated by psychological safety (H2). The results of our analysis
indicate that psychological safety is positively and significantly associated with intention
to stay (B3 = .56). We also observe two significant and positive indirect effects between
psychological climate and intention to stay (B3·B1= 0.29;B3·B2= 0.09). Thus, all three of
our hypotheses are confirmed by the structural equation model. The calculatedR2
values of
the model presented here indicate that we account for 53 percent of the observed variance in
our measurement of psychological safety and 29 percent of the variance in turnover intention.
AGE PRF GRD GDR PGM RAC
s1
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Relationship Parameter Value
Intention to Stay ON Psychological Safety B3 .56***
Sup./Emp. Leadership B3·B1 .29***
Human Resource Primacy B3·B2 .09***
Age (AGE) β1 .01***
Profession (PRF) β2 -.18**
Graduate Degree (EDU) β3 -.28***
Gender (GDR) β4 .05(ns)
Program (PGM) β5 .04(ns)
Minority (RAC) β6 -.11(ns)
Psychological Safety ON Sup./Emp. Leadership B1 .52***
Human Resource Primacy B2 .16***
Sup./Emp. Leadership WITH Human Resource Primacy ρ1 .33***
* p<.05; ** p<.01; *** p<.001
Table 2: Model Parameter Estimates
5. Discussion
5.1. Summary
We found both supportive and empowering leadership, as well as human resource
pri-macy influenced intention to stay through the mediating influence of psychological safety,
thus adding to the fledgling literature on psychological safety and staff retention. While
psychological safety was directly affected by both supportive and empowering leadership as
well as human resource primacy, the effect size was more than twice as large for supportive
and empowering leadership, an effect mirrored in other studies. While we calculated
signifi-cant indirect effects of human resource primacy and supportive and empowering leadership
turnover intention, our best-fitting model suggests that the effects of human resource
pri-macy and supportive and empowering leadership are both fully mediated by the effects of
work group psychological safety. Of all the effect sizes observed in this model, psychological
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Several control variables were included in our model to prevent spurious conclusions from
our analysis. Among the six individual level variables, the following three were statistically
significant: age, social work professional degree, and educational level (graduate degree).
Specifically, intention to stay increases with employee age. Since we did not have information
on agency tenure to include it may be that age serves as a proxy for agency tenure, with
staff who have been working in child welfare longer have a greater intention to leave. With
respect to educational status, we see a negative effect for educational level and professional
status, with individuals holding a graduate degree or graduates from a social work program
less inclined to remain with the organization. In our model race did not have a significant
effect on intention to stay. These results add to the mixed body of findings that typify
the literature on the relationship of demographic characteristics to turnover intention. The
implications of our findings are discussed below.
5.2. Research Implications
Study findings provide evidence of the importance of work group psychological safety to
public child welfare workers’ intention to stay. While team psychological safety is an
estab-lished and pivotal construct in research on team learning and performance in health care
and private sector work settings; its use in child welfare research represents a novel and
sig-nificant contribution to the literature. Health care teams share characteristics that set them
apart from child welfare supervisory units, including higher levels of interdependence among
members, greater status differentials and multidisciplinary membership. The fact that
psy-chological safety was an important mediator of supervisory and organizational support on
workers’ intention to stay points to a need to better understand the work group
psycho-logical safety’s relationship to related individual and organizational level climate constructs
including justice climate, trust, civility, employee voice all of which have been implicated
in turnover intention among staff. In addition future research ought to examine workgroup
psychological safety’s relationship to other child welfare staff outcomes including burnout,
turnover, staff performance and ultimately child and family outcomes.
The findings supported past research demonstrating significant variation in work groups’
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for studies of retention and turnover to capture the organizational context in their
concep-tualization, measurement, and analysis. Additional efforts are needed to refine a conceptual
model which articulates the manner in which unit and organizational level variables interact
with the attitudes to affect intention to stay. To adopt an individual level approach neglects
the social dynamics and work contacts that influence staff’s turnover intention. Given
evi-dence that related work group climate measures, such as justice climate, predict individual
level outcomes above and beyond individual level justice perceptions, suggests the value of
examining the context in which behavior occurs (Mayer & Kuenzi, 2010). Lastly, studies
frequently fail to distinguish between psychological (individual) or organizational climate
(including subgroups such as departments and teams) as the construct of theoretical
inter-est, and even in cases in which a study establishes organizational climate as the construct
of theoretical interest, it is often inappropriately operationalized as psychological climate.
Kuenzi & Schminke (2009) note uncovering more than 100 articles that theorized about
organizational climate but actually measured psychological climate.
5.3. Practice Implications
Supervisors have a major influence on whether staff view there’s supervisory work group
as psychologically safe. Studies indicate that individuals compare the potential benefits and
costs before engaging in a behavior (Detert & Burris, 2007; Morrison & Rothman, 2009). For
a supervisee to ask a question, seek feedback, report a mistake, or propose a new idea or ask
for help runs the risk that others, particularly their supervisor, will see them as incompetent,
ignorant, negative, or disruptive (Edmondson, 2012). Yet successful team learning as well as
staff retention involves work group members who have the capacity and willingness to speak
up, collaborate, experiment, and reflect on work group processes and outcomes.
These results point to the need for public child welfare organizations to train and
de-velop leaders by shaping their skills in coaching and communications. Studies provide an
evidence base for identifying specific leader behaviors that have been found to increase team
psychological safety. Inclusive leader behaviors, words and deeds that indicate an invitation
and appreciation for others’ contributions (Hirak, Peng, Carmeli & Schaubroeck, 2012) as
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accountable for living up to those norms (Nouwen, Decuyper & Put, 2012). In a similar
vein, leader’s interactional transparency including sharing relevant information, being open
to giving and receiving feedback, being forthcoming regarding motives and the reasoning
behind decisions, and displaying alignment between words and actions to his or her followers
(Vogelgesang, 2008).
However it would be a mistake to assess supervisor and work group member’s interactions
devoid of the larger organizational context shaping both supervisor and supervisee. Since
the relationship between a supervisor and work unit staff are nested within the relationship
between the supervisor and his or her superior, it seems likely that a supervisor’s interactions
with their staff is influenced by a supervisors’ perceived level of organizational support.
The limited research in this area indicates that supervisor perceptions of organizational
support are positively related to workers perceptions of supervisory support, suggesting
that supervisors who feels supported by the organization reciprocate with more supportive
treatment of their staff (Erdogan & Enders, 2007; Shanock & Eisenberger, 2006).
The results of this study also point to workers’ perceptions of organizational support as an
important influences on staffs’ intention to stay. Public child welfare agencies would benefit
from identifying ways of conveying to employees that the organization values employee’s
well-being. Providing training and professional development opportunities is one way to
communicates an organization’s investment and commitment to staff and is negatively related
to intention to leave (Curry, McCarragher & Dellmann-Jenkins, 2005; Clark, Smith & Uota,
2013). Additional strategies could include offering flexible alternative work schedules that
allow employees greater control over how they balance work and family responsibilities and
better access to educational/career development opportunities as well as telecommuting,
which enables employees to perform their assigned work outside of the office and eliminates
the need for daily commutes to their office.
5.4. Limitations
This study does have limitations that warrant consideration when interpreting findings.
Our research design was cross-sectional, precluding making inferences of causal order among
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in our ability to think about our model in causal terms, it is not a substitute for traditional
techniques used to establish causation (e.g. random assignment to treatment and control
conditions, etc.). Another limitation in our study concerns the measurements used in our
sta-tistical model. Although we conducted confirmatory factor analysis to assess and modify our
measurement model and utilized structural equation modeling to control for measurement
variance during the estimation of our model, our self-report questionnaire measures, are all
susceptible to common method variance. Finally, although we control for unit-level
cluster-ing in the calculation of the standard errors in our model, our analysis does not specifically
assess cluster-level (i.e. random) effects.
6. Conclusions
Prior research has documented the relationship between perceived organizational and
supervisory psychological climate measures and turnover intention. By learning more about
the variables that mediate the relationship between climate and retention, we gain an
in-creasingly accurate view of the processes which influence worker outcomes and in so doing
help determine where to focus organizational intervention efforts to increase staff retention.
The current study also adds to the limited literature examining child welfare workforce
at-titudes by controlling for clustering at the level of supervisors. The findings underscore the
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