Individual and work group influences on turnover ...

Children and Youth Services Review 42 (2014) 20–27

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Individual and work group influences on turnover intention among public child welfare workers: The effects of work group psychological safety☆ Jean M. Kruzich a,⁎, Joseph A. Mienko a, Mark E. Courtney b a b

Partners for Our Children, School of Social Work, University of Washington, United States School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago, United States

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 7 February 2014 Accepted 7 March 2014 Available online 21 March 2014 Keywords: Turnover intention Psychological safety Supervisor support Empowering leadership Organizational support

a b s t r a c t The antecedents and consequences of workgroup psychological safety were examined in a statewide study of 1040 public child welfare workers nested within 239 supervisory work units. Work group psychological safety mediated the effects of individual-level antecedents on turnover intention. Structural equation results indicated that when controlling for supervisory work unit-level clustering, a worker's perception of supervisory support and their office administrators' attention to human resources were significantly and positively associated with a worker's level of work group psychological safety. In turn, group psychological safety was significantly and positively associated with workers' intent to remain employed in their current organization. These findings underscore the importance of the supervisory work group in shaping individual attitudes and behavioral intentions, as well as the importance of including work units in the conceptual, measurement, and analytic models used in future studies of staff retention. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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 also 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, Wang, & Huang, 2013). Tham (2007), in a survey of public child welfare workers in Sweden, found that 48% of the 302 workers indicated an intention to leave in the coming year. Strand and Dore (2009), studying public child welfare staff in a state with a relatively low turnover rate of 8%, found that 18% of the workforce intended to leave in the next year and an additional 44% indicated

☆ The authors wish to acknowledge the collaboration with the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services, Children's Administration, the contributions of Elizabeth Jones, Maureen Newby, Matt Orme, Sandra Lyons, JoAnn Lee, Mark Eddy, and the supervisors and social workers who participated in this study. The views expressed here are, however, those of the authors. ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (J.M. Kruzich), [email protected] (J.A. Mienko), [email protected] (M.E. Courtney).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2014.03.005 0190-7409/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

that 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 that employees with social work degrees are more likely to intend to stay (Ellett, Ellett, & Rugutt, 2003; Scannapieco, Connell-Carrick, & Painter, 2007; Shim, 2010), others finding 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, Grabarek, and Ortega (2010) found that minority (operationalized as non-white) child welfare staff had lower levels of work commitment, while other studies found no relationship between race and work withdrawal (DePanfilis & Zlotnik, 2008) and still others concluded that Caucasian/White child welfare staff were less likely to stay (Shim, 2010). Individual characteristics consistently related to intention to leave, and its oppositeintention to stay, are work attitudes including job satisfaction (Auerbach, McGowan, Ausberger, Strolin-Goltzman, & Schudrich, 2010; Freund, 2005; Mor Barak, Levin, Nissly, & Lane, 2006; Mor Barak, Nissly, & Levin, 2001; Moynihan & Pandey, 2007; Weaver, Chang, Clark, & Rhee, 2007), organizational commitment (Boyas, Wind, & Kang, 2012; Faller et al., 2010; Mor Barak et al., 2006), and burnout (Boyas et al., 2012; Drake & Yadama, 1996; Ducharme, Knudsen, & Roman, 2007; Huang, Chuang, & Lin, 2003; Kim & Lee, 2009; Kim, Solomon, & Jang, 2012; Kim & Stoner, 2008; Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004; Strolin et al., 2005). Self-efficacy, included in a handful of studies, has also regularly been found to relate to turnover intention (Chen & Scannapieco, 2010; Ellett, 2009; Ellett, Ellis, Westbrook, & Dews, 2007; Kim & Lee, 2009; Weaver et al., 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; Fakunmoju, Woodruff, Kim, LeFevre, & Hong, 2010; Faller et al., 2010;

J.M. Kruzich et al. / Children and Youth Services Review 42 (2014) 20–27 Landsman, 2001; Mor Barak, Travis, Pyun, & Xie, 2009; Nissly et al., 2005; Strand & Dore, 2009; Tham, 2007) and perceived organizational support (POS) (DePanfilis & Zlotnik, 2008; Ellett, 2000; Gillet, Gagné, Sauvagère, & Fouquereau, 2012; Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002; Riggle, Edmondson, & Hansen, 2009; Tham, 2007). While some studies of turnover intention in human service settings use conceptual models that explicitly consider both individual and contextual factors, with few exceptions (e.g., Glisson & Green, 2006; Jinnett & Alexander, 1999; Smith, 2005) all work environment characteristics and individual attitudes are examined only at the individual level (Bliese & Jex, 2002). Failure to control for clustering at the level of the work unit or other organizational levels limits our ability to explain child welfare staff attitudes and behaviors (Bliese & Jex, 2002; Chang et al., 2013). The failure to account for clustering at these levels may 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) introducing psychological safety as a potential predictor of turnover intention, and (3) providing evidence for the utility of the psychological safety construct beyond multidisciplinary teams in health care settings. 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 workers' intention to stay.

2. Theoretical background Empirical support 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 (i.e., individual perceptions of the work environment) and organizational climate, including organizational work group, and departments i.e., (collective perceptions of the work environment) (James & Jones, 1974). While general agreement exists on how psychological climate is defined, there is neither consensus on the content and specific dimensions comprising the construct (Carr, Schmidt, Ford, & DeShon, 2003; Jones & James, 1979; Parker et al., 2003) nor whether climate is best conceived of as a global or a facet-specific construct. Regardless, a wide range of facet-specific work climate measures, including justice, trust, civility, and employee voice have been found to be related to staff retention.

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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 significant predictor of intention to remain employed in child welfare (Ellett, 2009; Westbrook, Ellett, & Asberg, 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 and Eisenberger (2002), in their meta-analysis, found that perceived organizational support was negatively related to withdrawal behaviors such as absenteeism, tardiness, and turnover. Perceptions of supportive human resource practices (e.g., participation in decision making, fairness of rewards, and growth opportunities) have also been found to contribute to the development of perceived organizational support, and perceived organizational support was negatively related to withdrawal (Allen, Shore, & Griffeth, 2003). Eisenberger, Stinglhamber, Vandenberghe, Sucharski, and Rhoades (2002) found that employees who believed that the supervisor valued their contributions and cared about their well-being showed increased perceived organizational support, which in turn was related to decreased turnover. Finally, a subsequent meta-analysis provided additional support, with perceived organizational support accounting for nearly 25% 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 organization (POS), they also develop perceptions of the degree to which supervisors value their contributions and care about their well-being (PSS) (Walumbwa et al., 2011). Child welfare 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 and Perry (2003) found that PSS predicted intention to remain employed. Scannapieco and Connell-Corrick (2003) compared workers who stayed at the agency and those who left, and found that those who stayed spent more time with their supervisors than those who left. Thus, results from multiple studies indicate that supervisors' behavior has considerable potential to affect climate perceptions: perceptions that can influence an employee's intention to stay.

2.2. Perceived organizational support (POS) 2.4. Team psychological safety Organizational support theory (Eisenberger, Hungtington, Hutchison, & Sowa, 1986; Shore, Barksdale, & Shore, 1995.) posits that in order to meet socio-emotional needs and to assess the organization's readiness to reward increased efforts, employees form general beliefs 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 favorably 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 that the largest differences 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 organization. Specifically, those who intended to leave seldom felt well taken care of or rewarded for a job well done, and perceived management as less interested in their health and well-being than those who intended to stay. Two

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 characterized 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 (May, Gilson, & Harter, 2004; Rathert, Ishqaidef, & May, 2009; Vogelgesang, 2008), team learning (Edmondson, 1999; Schaubroeck, Lam, & Peng, 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 their managers' intentions and attitudes towards employees play an important role in shaping the degree of psychological safety. Leader behaviors identified as antecedents to psychological safety are leader inclusiveness i.e., words and deeds exhibited that invite and appreciate others' contributions in work groups (Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006). In contrast, inconsistency in organizational conditions such as rewards, values, and evaluation systems

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J.M. Kruzich et al. / Children and Youth Services Review 42 (2014) 20–27

predict lower psychological safety (Lee, Edmondson, Thomke, & Worline, 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. Callister (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 was found to have 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 to mediate 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. Consistent 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 supervisor 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 a worker's intention to stay (H3). 3. Methods 3.1. Sample The sample for this study was drawn from a population of public child welfare social workers in Washington State in 2009. Workers were surveyed as a part of the implementation 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%) 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% (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), and educational level. Additional standardized measurements were included in the survey addressing organizational psychological climate, psychological safety, and intention to stay in the organization. Psychological climate measures were assessed using the QPS General Nordic Questionnaire for Psychological and Social Factors at Work (Dallner, 2000; Lindström et al., 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 3-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's α 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 Questionnaire 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 confirmatory factor analysis (using the sample outlined above) suggested that these sub-scales should be collapsed into a single 5item factor. Cronbach's α for the combined sub-scale was .91. We refer to this combined measurement as supportive and empowering leadership (SEL).

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 that 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's α for psychological safety was .81.


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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.

3.2.4. Intention to stay (ITS) Turnover intentions served as the dependent variable of the study and this study used the same measures as Moynihan and Pandey (2007) in their study of turnover intention in twelve human 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 measurement reflected an overall intention to stay with the organization. Cronbach's α for turnover intention was .75.

4. Results 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 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 welfare and may differentially affect a worker's intention to stay due to the levels of stress 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.

4.1. Sample description The majority of respondents in the study sample were white (71%), over the age of 40 (48%), and female (77%). Supervisory units ranged in size from 1 to 9 workers with a mean of 4.4 and a median of 4. About 53% of the sample had completed a graduate degree and 68% indicated that they had received a social work degree. Approximately 27% of the sample indicated that they were providing child protection services as opposed to other child welfare service areas (e.g., permanency planning). 4.2. ICC results The results of our ICC analysis indicated significant group-level clustering in the measurements of human resource primacy (ICC = .06, F = 1.35, p b .01), supportive and empowering leadership (ICC = .16, F = 1.93, p b .01), and psychological safety (ICC = .22, F = 2.31, p b .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 measurement variables, we used a sandwich estimator to calculate the standard errors in our model. In this way, we did not seek to answer specific questions about the unit-level relationships between our measurement variables. However, we did control for the non-independence of observations suggested by our ICC analysis and ensured that we could place a high degree of confidence in any indicators of uncertainty in our results.

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 yield 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

4.3. SEM results The results of the SEM model are shown graphically in Fig. 1. Unstandardized parameter estimates are displayed in Table 2. As is standard in SEM depictions, latent variables are represented as circles and manifest

Table 1 Descriptive statistics and correlation coefficients.

1. SEL 2. HRP 3. TPS 4. ITS 5. AGE 6. PRF 7. EDU 8. GDR 9. PGM 10. RAC Median

1.

2.

– .32⁎⁎⁎ .53⁎⁎⁎ .24⁎⁎⁎

– .24⁎⁎⁎ .41⁎⁎⁎

−.05 (ns) .00 (ns) .01 (ns) −.02 (ns) −.05 (ns) −.01 (ns) 4.2

−.04 (ns) −.06 (ns) −.04 (ns) −.06 (ns) −.01.03 .00 (ns) 2.3

3.

– .25⁎⁎⁎ .03 .03 (ns) −.03 (ns) .00 (ns) −.09⁎⁎ −.09⁎⁎ 4

4.

– .14⁎⁎⁎ −.1⁎⁎ −.14⁎⁎⁎ .00 (ns) .01 (ns) −.07⁎ 3.5

5.

– −.11⁎⁎⁎ −.03 (ns) −.12⁎⁎⁎ −.03 (ns) −.09⁎⁎ 41.8

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

– .01 (ns) .02 (ns) .02 (ns) −.01 (ns) 0.68

– .04 (ns) .00 (ns) .03 (ns) 0.53

– −.05 (ns) .00 (ns) 0.77

– .03 (ns) 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, and RAC = minority status. ⁎ p b .05. ⁎⁎ p b .01. ⁎⁎⁎ p b .001.

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variables are displayed as squares or rectangles. Model fit was evaluated using the standards identified by Hu and 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 estimated CFI of .97 and a TLI of .96. The estimated RMSEA is .06. These indices are an improvement over other models fit to our data in which supportive and empowering leadership and human resource primacy were only partially mediated by psychological safety. Thus, based on the Hu and 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 be positively related to team-level psychological safety (H1). The results of our model indicated that the relationship between supportive and empowering leadership and psychological safety was 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 indicated that psychological safety is positively and significantly associated with intention to stay (B3 = .56). We also observed 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 were confirmed by the structural equation model. The calculated R2 values of the model presented here indicate that we account for 53% of the observed variance in our measurement of psychological safety and 29% of the variance in turnover intention. 5. Discussion 5.1. Summary We found that both supportive and empowering leadership, as well as human resource primacy, influenced intention to stay through the mediating influence of psychological safety, thus adding to the fledgling

p1

p2

p3

p4

p5

p6

Table 2 Model parameter estimates. Relationship Intention to stay

On

Psychological safety

On

Sup./emp. leadership

With

Psychological safety Sup./emp. leadership Human resource primacy Age (AGE) Profession (PRF) Graduate degree (EDU) Gender (GDR) Program (PGM) Minority (RAC) Sup./emp. leadership Human resource primacy Human resource primacy

Parameter

Value

B3 B3 · B1 B3 · B2 β1 β2 β3 β4 β5 β6 B1 B2 ρ1

.56⁎⁎⁎ .29⁎⁎⁎ .09⁎⁎⁎ .01⁎⁎⁎ −.18⁎⁎ −.28⁎⁎⁎

⁎⁎ p b .01. ⁎⁎⁎ p b .001.

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 significant indirect effects of human resource primacy and supportive and empowering leadership on turnover intention, our best-fitting model suggests that the effects of human resource primacy and supportive and empowering leadership were both fully mediated by the effects of work group psychological safety. Of all the effect sizes observed in this model, psychological safety clearly had the strongest effect on turnover intention. 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 having a greater intention to leave. With respect to educational status, we see a negative effect for educational level and

p7

i1

i2

s1

s2 Team Sup./Emp. s3

B1

Leadership

Intention

Psychological

B3

To

Safety

Stay

e1

e2

β1

ρ1 B2

AGE

h1 Human h2

.05 (ns) .04 (ns) −.11 (ns) .52⁎⁎⁎ .16⁎⁎⁎ .33⁎⁎⁎

Resource Primacy

h3 Fig. 1. Final model path diagram.

β2 PRF

β3 GRD

β4 GDR

β5 PGM

β6 RAC


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 established 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 significant 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 psychological safety was an important mediator of supervisory and organizational support on workers' intention to stay points to a need to better understand work group psychological safety's relationship to related individual- and organizational-level climate constructs, including justice climate, trust, civility, and employee voice-all of which have been implicated in turnover intention among staff. In addition, future research ought to examine work group 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' levels of psychological safety within the same office. This variation highlights the need for studies of retention and turnover to include work group context in their conceptualization, measurement, and analysis. Additional efforts are needed to refine a conceptual model that articulates the manner in that 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 intentions. Evidence 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) and organizational (including subgroups such as departments and teams) climates as the construct of theoretical interest. 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 and 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 their 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). Supervisees who asks a question, seeks feedback, reports a mistake, proposes a new idea, or asks for help run 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 require 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 develop leaders by shaping their skills in coaching and communications. Studies provide an evidence base for identifying specific

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leader behaviors that have been found to increase team psychological safety. Inclusive leader behaviors are words and deeds that indicate an invitation and appreciation for others' contributions (Hirak, Peng, Carmeli, & Schaubroeck, 2012) ,co-creation with group members of psychologically safe group norms, and holding staff accountable for living up to those norms (Nouwen, Decuyper, & Put, 2012). In a similar vein, a leader's interactional transparency includes 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 members' interactions devoid of the larger organizational context shaping both supervisor and supervisee. Since the relationship between a supervisor and work unit staff is nested within the relationship between the supervisor and his or her superior, it seems likely that a supervisors' interactions with their staff are influenced by 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 feel 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 influence on staffs' intention to stay. Public child welfare agencies would benefit from identifying ways of conveying to employees that the organization values employees' wellbeing. Providing training and professional development opportunities is one way to communicate an organization's investment and commitment to staff, and is negatively related to intention to leave (Clark, Smith, & Uota, 2013; Curry, McCarragher, & Dellmann-Jenkins, 2005). 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 antecedent and outcome variables. Although the use of structural equation modeling assists 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). Another limitation in our study concerns the measurements used in our statistical 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 clustering 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 increasingly accurate view of the processes that 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 attitudes by

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