What makes me stay? An investigation into factors influencing older workers’ intentions to stay

Abstract

This article examines the factors that influence older personal care workers’ (PCWs’) (aged 50+) intentions to stay. This article reports on the quantitative and qualitative findings from a cross-sectional survey from four aged care organisations in Australia. The results found that both personal (age, location of the job, health and family commitments) and organisational (job satisfaction, perceived supervisor support (PSS), job embeddedness, working environment, pay, career opportunities and job stability) factors influenced intentions. However, organisational factors outweighed personal factors, irrespective of time. Combined, these findings suggest that organisations can influence employee retention significantly by promoting a supportive working environment and by providing clear career progression, appropriate pay and job security to their employees.

Keywords:

• employee retention
• personal care workers
• aged care
• workforce
• Australia

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Katrina Radford

Katrina Radford, PhD, is a lecturer at Griffith University Business School. Her research interests include the ageing workforce, intergenerational issues, retention and turnover of the workforce as well as broader human resource management and organisational management issues within the health sector. She has industry experience in aged care, disability and retail and is passionate about the future social care workforce globally.

Kate Shacklock

Kate Shacklock, PhD, is an associate professor and ex-Discipline Leader (HRM and ER) at the Griffith Business School’s Department of Employment Relations and Human Resources, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia. Her research interests include the ageing workforce, intergenerational issues, retention and human resource management generally. She is a researcher at the Griffith University Research Centre for Work, Organisation and Wellbeing, with over 20 years’ experience as a practitioner in human resource management prior to joining academia.

Ellen Meissner

Dr Ellen Meissner completed her degree in psychology and worked as an organisational psychologist focussing on recruitment and training. She then started working in research exploring new ways of teacher education with a team of researchers. This sparked an interest in furthering her academic career and she completed a PhD in organisational behaviour. Her research areas are career pathways, particularly of middle managers, aged care workforce and professional identity. Ellen enjoys teaching and has a broad teaching portfolio including research methods, organisational psychology, human resource management, training and development and management concepts.