A Workforce or Workplace Crisis?-Applying an Organizational Perspective to the Study of Human Services Employment

Abstract

This paper applies an organizational perspective to the study of employment in human services workplaces, specifically domestic violence services agencies. The author used the theory of firmlevel labor markets to investigate how organizations occupying the same field of service may nonetheless differ in their approaches to granting instrumental benefits to their jobs. Data come from the population of 25 nonprofit domestic violence programs and their employees in a Midwestern metropolitan area. Examining a range of employment benefits, the author found that agencies as a whole and specific, comparable jobs differed in the access they provided to these “workplace opportunities,” and concludes by discussing the theoretical and organizational implications of this variation for the workforce outcomes of recruitment, retention and diversity.

Key Words:

• Human service organizations
• recruitment
• retention
• turnover
• internal labor markets
• human resource management