Dare to Care: Exploring the Relationships between Socio-Moral Climate, Perceived Stress, and Work Engagement in a Social Service Agency

Abstract

Human service professionals working in an interpersonal violence social service agency are at increased risk of experiencing emotional burnout, compassion fatigue, and high levels of stress, which may reduce work engagement, increase turnover, and ultimately negatively affect client outcomes. However, a positive organizational climate has the potential to buffer the negative effects of perceived stress on work engagement. Socio-moral climate is a behavioral-based organizational construct that assumes that workplace practices and procedures can impact employees’ attitudes and behaviors. This exploratory study (N = 41) investigates the relationships between perceived stress, work engagement, and socio-moral climate in a social service agency serving survivors of interpersonal violence, comparing employees with direct interactions with clients in a shelter to those with indirect contact at a different location. Results of moderation analyses show that socio-moral climate significantly predicts higher work engagement, while perceived stress is negatively associated with work engagement; however, the interaction effect was not significant and there were no differences in perceived stress between both employees. Further research should continue to investigate the role of socio-moral climate on employee work engagement in social service agencies, which could improve the quality of services for their clients.

Keywords:

• Socio-moral climate
• work climate
• perceived stress
• work engagement
• domestic violence shelter agency
• social service agency

Disclosure statement

The authors certify that they have no affiliations with or involvement in the social service agency nor any financial interest, or non-financial in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript.

Brigitte Steinheider [insert orcid logo] http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9222-4209