Purpose: The loss of promising and desirable case workers in the front line workforce of public child welfare agencies in the US presents a continuing challenge to organizational administrators and researchers. The cost to the public in reduced quality of care to vulnerable children and their families is inestimable while the costs of replacing, training and bring workers to basic skill levels is enormous. The problem of turnover has received increased attention in the last few years; however, no single line of research has found a definitive answer to this perplexing question. The purpose of this study was to test some questions related to organizational factors that could explain turnover and, perhaps, provide answers to preventing the loss of effective or promising new employees.

Methods: The study used the Survey of Organizational Excellence (SOE), a web-based instrument, which is administered annually to a public child welfare agency as part of its quality improvement program. A total of 751 frontline child welfare workers in the state of Missouri were participated. Overall, females and males comprised approximately 88 percent and 12 percent of the participants, respectively. Most participants (87%) were White and 82 percent had bachelor's degree. In terms of years in service, 39% had worked at least 6 years. Sixty-seven percent of the respondents planed to work for the organization in two years, though most respondents (89%) were not promoted during the last two years. The SOE measures five workplace dimensions including work group, accommodations, organizational features, information, and personal features.

Results: The results of logistic regression for turnover showed that those who were female, White, above 40 years old, not the primary wage earner in the family, having family, working at least six years, and less satisfied with their job or less empowered to perform their work were more likely to have a plan to leave their agency within two years. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses found that work, accommodations, and organization were significant predictors of a subject's job satisfaction and explained 52% (p < .001) of the variance in job satisfaction. Work, accommodations, organization, and information appeared to contribute significantly and explained 67% (p < .001) of the variance in burnout.

Implications: This study points out the significant role the agency performs in a caseworker's decision to continue employment in public child welfare. Improving the competence and effectiveness of social work practitioners may prove to be the best way to reduce problems of low job satisfaction and therefore of turnover and burnout. Results suggest that in order for employees to remain on the job, they need to feel a sense of satisfaction from the work that they do and a sense of commitment to the organization or the population served by it. Because the findings also indicate that more experienced workers and those who feel burnout are more likely to leave, turnover might be reduced if they are participating in training and receiving job-related continuing education.