Organizational Factors for Wasteful Work and Their Effects in Japanese Nursing Homes: Focusing on Organizational Culture and Qwl of Care Workers

Background and Purpose. This study aims to clarify the organizational factors related to “wasteful work” in Japanese nursing homes and verify its effect on the staff’s quality of working life (QWL), which refers to the favorable conditions and environments of a workplace.

Facing a chronic shortage of human resources, improving work efficiency and eliminating wasteful work (e.g., redundant paperwork and meetings) are critical importance for nursing care facilities in Japan. However, there is little research on the mechanisms that generate and encourage wasteful work and how wasteful work impacts staff’s QWL. Our study fills these knowledge gap by addressing the following questions: (1) Which specific tasks are considered wasteful from nursing care worker’s perspectives? (2) In which organizational culture is wasteful work more prevalent? (3) How does wasteful work affect staff QWL?

Methods. We conducted a postal questionnaire survey with nursing care workers at 500 nursing homes in the Kansai region of Japan in January 2023. Each nursing home received three copies of the questionnaire, and a total of 548 people responded, resulting in a response rate of 36.5%. The survey inquired about respondents’ perspectives on wasteful work and included validated measures of organizational culture (e.g., psychological safety, organizational learning, and employee-led innovation) and QWL (e.g., such as work satisfaction, work motivation, willingness to continue working, and sense of achievement). SPSS was used to perform simple tabulation and multivariate regression analysis.

Findings. Around 75% of care workers recognized wasteful work in their workplaces, which primarily included administrative tasks, such as excessive meetings, duplication of recording work (handwritten and digital documentations), cleaning and organizing common areas, and staff evaluation tasks. Respondents also found some core work-related tasks (e.g., serving meals, cleaning up, and caregiving) are also wasteful and can be done by machines and robots. Regression analysis showed that care workers in facilities with lower psychological safety, organizational learning, and employee-led innovation are more likely to identify more wasteful work (p < .05). This finding suggests that it is difficult to devise proposals and collaborative avenues for reducing wasteful work at facilities without a trusting environment, collective problem solving, and opportunities for innovation. Finally, we found statistically significant negative relationship between respondents’ reporting of wasteful work and their QWL (p < 0.05), suggesting wasteful work can negatively influence employees’ motivation and willingness to work.

Conclusion and Implications. In the Japanese nursing home service field, managing wasteful work is critical importance. Our study demonstrates the prevalence of wasteful work in the field, wasteful work’s relationship with organizational culture, and wasteful work’s impacts on care staff’s QWL. Our finding collectively suggests that establishing an organizational culture that emphasizes learning, enabling employees to recognize problems, propose solutions, and implement improvements is important. In the follow-up study, we will conduct case studies on how nursing home facilities create organizational culture that reduce wasteful work and improve workers’ QWL.