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Background This study examines whether alignment of actual and preferred employment policies, including compensation method, employment status, and work schedule, affect midwives’ intention to stay in the profession. The study further investigates the moderating effect of financial-rewards satisfaction and compares midwives’ policy preferences in urban/rural practices. Methods Cross-sectional survey data from 549 midwives across Canada were analysed through descriptive statistics, bivariate correlations, and hierarchical linear regressions. Further regression analysis separated data for urban/rural practicing midwives. Results Three-quarters of the respondents are paid through a billable-course-of-care, while only one-third prefer this model. Another one-third prefer a combination of salary and billable-course-of-care. More than three-quarters of the respondents are independent contractors, but half prefer other forms of employee status. Lastly, half prefer a part-time work schedule, while others prefer full-time. Alignment of actual and preferred employment policies significantly explains midwives’ intention to stay in the profession. Intentions to stay in the profession for urban midwives is significantly affected by the alignment of actual and preferred compensation methods, but not for rural ones. Both urban and rural midwives report similar preferences for employment status and work schedule policies. Furthermore, satisfaction with financial rewards is significantly associated with their intention to stay. Conclusion Policymakers can positively influence midwives’ intention to stay in the profession by facilitating alignment of their actual and preferred employment policies.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating role of stress between work intensification and musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) focusing on personal support workers (PSWs) in home and community care.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis sample of 922 comes from the 2015 survey of PSWs employed in Ontario, Canada. The endogenous variable is self-reported MSDs, and the exogenous variable is work intensification. Stress, measured as symptoms of stress, is the mediating variable. Other factors shown in the literature as associated with stress and/or MSDs are included as control variables. Structural equation model regression analyses are presented.FindingsThe results show that stress mediates the effect of work intensification on PSW’s MSDs. Other significant factors included being injured in the past year, facing hazards at work and preferring less hours – all had positive and significant substantive effects on MSDs.Research limitations/implicationsThe survey is cross-sectional and not longitudinal or experimental in design, and it focuses on a single occupation in a single sector in Ontario, Canada and, as such, this can limit the generalizability of the results to other occupations and sectors.Practical implicationsFor PSW employers including their human resource managers, supervisors, schedulers and policy-makers, the study recommends reducing work intensification to lower stress levels and MSDs.Originality/valueThe findings of this study contribute to the theory and knowledge by providing evidence on how work intensification can affect workers’ health and assist decision makers in taking actions to create healthy work environments.

This study examines the role of work intensification in personal support workers’ (PSWs) intention to stay, while exploring the mediating relationships of stress and extrinsic and intrinsic job satisfaction. A 2015 survey of 938 PSWs is analysed using structural equation modelling. It is found that work intensification is negatively associated with intention to stay, and this relationship is mediated through stress and intrinsic job satisfaction. Extrinsic job satisfaction does not play a mediating role. Findings explain the mechanism between work intensification and intention to stay, and demonstrate work intensification as a challenge in retaining PSWs in home and community care work.

Using survey data collected in Ontario, Canada, we explore the impacts of autonomy on community-based Personal Support Workers' intrinsic job satisfaction, capacity to care for and about clients, and intention to continue working in home care. Autonomy was measured as "freedom to decide how to do your job" and "working on your own." Findings show that freedom to do your job and working on your own are both positively associated with job satisfaction and capacity to care, and indirectly increase intention to stay through their relationships with job satisfaction and capacity to care. We suggest that policies should allow personal support workers to make decisions about how to do their job within the care plans provided, to facilitate retention of this highly needed workforce.

This study tests the impact of work intensification on work stress, job satisfaction, and intention to stay focusing on personal support workers. Work stress and job satisfaction are the mediating ...

This study seeks to understand the role of demographic structure of the society as it pertains to the group size (i.e., number of group members) and individuals’ intersecting identities in shaping employment inequalities. Integrating homophily, intersectionality, and theory of minority group threat, we examine the likelihood of employment and level of employment income of individuals with varying immigrant and disability statuses. Our data consists of three Statistics Canada datasets: the 2001 and 2006 waves of the Participation and Activity Limitation Survey (PALS) linked with the 2001 and 2006 Censuses, and the 2012 Canadian Survey on Disability (CSD) linked with the 2011 National Household Survey 2011. We conduct our analysis by examining the following sub-groups: Canadian-born with no disabilities (CnD), immigrants with no disabilities (InD), Canadian-born with disabilities (CwD), and immigrants with disabilities (IwD). Consistent with the theory of minority group threat and intersectionality, we find...

Demand for home and community care services has continuously increased in Canada and elsewhere in the last few decades due to aging of the population and healthcare policy changes shaped by budgetary limitations. As a result, home and community care organizations are having trouble hiring adequate numbers of healthcare workers to meet the escalating demand, the result being increased workload on these workers. Another stream of literature has shown that care recipients and their family members, frustrated with the limited ability of healthcare workers to provide adequate care because of increased workload, might resort to violence and harassment. Bringing these two streams of literature together, we examined the relationships among three variables : workload ; workplace violence and harassment ; and well-being of personal support workers (PSWs).Using structural equation modeling, we analyzed a 2015 Ontario-wide survey of 1,347 PSWs employed in the home and community care sector. The results indicate that workload is negatively associated with extrinsic and intrinsic job satisfaction, and this relationship is mediated by violence and harassment and by stress. Specifically, workload is positively associated with violence and harassment at work, which in turn is positively associated with stress, which in turn is negatively associated with extrinsic and intrinsic job satisfaction.Our study contributes to the literature by examining the impact of a work environment factor, workload, on the well-being of PSWs. This approach makes it possible to expand the current literature’s focus on psychological processes at the individual level to a more contextual approach. Furthermore, the results have important implications for home and community care organizations as well as for the healthcare sector in general. The well-being of PSWs is critical to retaining them and to ensuring the quality of care they provide their clients. Thus, their workload should be lowered to a more manageable level to help minimize the violence and harassment they experience., Avec le vieillissement de la population et l’évolution des politiques de santé en raison de contraintes budgétaires, le Canada connait depuis quelques décennies, tout comme d’autre pays, une augmentation continue de la demande de services de soins à domicile et en milieu communautaire. Ainsi, les fournisseurs de ces services ont du mal à embaucher suffisamment de personnel de santé pour répondre à la demande croissante, ce qui augmenterait la charge de travail qui pèse sur ces travailleurs. Un autre courant de littérature montre que certains bénéficiaires de soins, ainsi que les membres de leur famille, frustrés par la capacité limitée du personnel de santé à fournir des soins adéquats en raison de la charge de travail accrue, risquent de recourir à la violence ou au harcèlement. En réunissant ces deux courants de littérature, nous nous sommes penchés sur les relations entre trois variables, soit la charge de travail, la violence et le harcèlement au travail et le bien-être des préposés aux bénéficiaires (PAB).En utilisant la modélisation par équation structurale, nous avons analysé les données provenant d’une enquête ontarienne menée en 2015 sur 1347 PAB ouvrant dans le secteur des soins à domicile et en milieu communautaire. D’abord, les résultats indiquent que la charge de travail est négativement associée autant à la satisfaction intrinsèque au travail qu’à la satisfaction extrinsèque au travail ; cette relation est influencée par la violence et le harcèlement, ainsi que par le stress. Plus particulièrement, la charge de travail est positivement associée à la violence et au harcèlement sur le lieu de travail, qui sont à leur tour positivement associés au stress, qui est à son tour négativement associé autant à la satisfaction intrinsèque au travail qu’à la satisfaction extrinsèque au travail.La présente étude contribue à la littérature par une analyse de l’impact d’un facteur du milieu de travail, soit la charge de travail, sur le bien-être des PAB. Cette approche permet d’élargir la portée de la littérature, qui est actuellement centrée sur les processus psychologiques de l’individu, pour tenir davantage compte du contexte. De plus, les résultats ont des implications importantes autant pour les fournisseurs de soins à domicile et en milieu communautaire que pour le secteur de santé en général. Le bien-être des PAB est essentiel pour les retenir et pour garantir la qualité des soins fournis. Ainsi, pour aider à minimiser la violence et le harcèlement qu’ils subissent, la charge de travail devrait être réduite à un niveau plus facile à gérer.