The influence of job satisfaction on child welfare worker's desire to stay: An examination of the interaction effect of self-efficacy and supportive supervision

Prior research shows child welfare workforce has constantly been challenged by worker's turnover issue. Although improving job satisfaction is adopted by many agencies as a solution to encourage workers to stay, little is known whether its effect remains under the influence of certain psychosocial factors of workers. The present study attempts to explore the effect of job satisfaction on child welfare worker's desire to stay through examining the intervening effects of worker's work related self-efficacy and supervisor's support. Our findings showed that the interaction effect did exist such that job satisfaction had greater positive impact for workers of high self-efficacy in terms of the desire to stay. Findings further revealed that job satisfaction had substantial impacts on improving worker's desire to stay under most of the circumstances, except for the circumstance when workers concurrently perceiving low work related self-efficacy and low supervisor's support. Finding also revealed that supervisor's support was particularly important to retain workers of low self-efficacy. In conclusion, improving job satisfaction may not be a universal approach for worker retention due to the influence of worker's self-efficacy. On the other hand, we recognize that supervisor's support is an important factor in addition to job satisfaction that cannot be overlooked in child welfare worker retention. In light of the significant interaction effect that was identified in the present study, we suggested the need to examine the interaction effect among retention predictors in future research.