Employee empowerment, innovative behavior and job productivity of public health nurses: a cross-sectional questionnaire survey

Background Employee empowerment is an important organizational issue. Empowered employees with new ideas and innovative attributes may increase their ability to respond more effectively to face extensive changes in current public health care work environments. Objectives The objective of this study was to investigate the relationships between employee empowerment, innovative behaviors and job productivity of public health nurses (PHNs). Design This study conducted a cross-sectional research design. Settings and participants Purposive sampling was conducted from six health bureaus in northern Taiwan. 670 PHNs were approached and 576 valid questionnaires were collected, with a response rate of 85.9%. Methods Structured questionnaires were used to collect data by post. Results Meaning and competence subscales of psychological empowerment, information and opportunity subscales of organizational empowerment, and innovative behaviors were the predictors of job productivity, only accounting for 16.4% of the variance. The competence subscale of psychological empowerment made the most contribution to job productivity ( β =0.31). Meaning subscale of psychological empowerment has a negative impact on job productivity. Conclusions Employee empowerment and innovative behavior of PHNs have little influence on job productivity. Employees with greater competence for delivering public health showed higher self-evaluated job productivity. The negative influences on job productivity possibly caused by conflict meaning on public health among PHNs in current public health policy. It should be an issue in further researches. Public health department should strengthen continuing educations to foster competence of psychological sense of empowerment and innovative behavior to increase job productivity.