Exploring Career Advancement Perceptions and Turnover Intentions Among Underrepresented Home Care Workers

Background and Purpose: The home care sector plays a crucial role in providing essential services to the elderly, yet integrating information technologies remains challenging. A significant portion of this workforce comprises low-income individuals who often face barriers to career advancement, resulting in reduced job satisfaction and increased turnover intention. Despite this, little is known about how these workers perceive the components of career advancement and their impact on job satisfaction, economic self-sufficiency, and turnover intention. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the perceived structure of career advancement and its relationships with turnover intention among underrepresented home care workers based on gender, race, and income, offering empirical insights to enhance career development prospects.

Methods: Data were collected from 302 workers employed by an organization providing home care and support services in the Midwest region of the U.S. between November 2019 and February 2020. The majority of participants were African American women living in low-income households. Career advancement was assessed using two scales consisting of 27 items for career advancement barriers and 24 items for career advancement hopes. Job satisfaction was measured using five items adapted from Brayfield-Rothe's (1951) overall job satisfaction scale, while economic self-sufficiency was evaluated using the 15-item WEN ESS scale. Turnover intention was assessed with two items, excluding the screening item from Carmeli and Weisberg's (2006) scale. Latent profile analysis identified groups based on factor analyses of career advancement barriers and hopes. Multiple linear regression was conducted to analyze the effects of career advancement latent groups, economic self-sufficiency, and job satisfaction on turnover intention, controlling for demographic variables.

Results: Three factors emerged for career advancement barriers (communication and soft skills, labor market exclusion, and human capital), and two for career advancement hope (advancement pathway and current potential). Latent profile analysis revealed two groups: one with low barriers but high hope and another with high barriers and high hope. Multiple linear regression showed that the group with high barriers and high hope exhibited a greater turnover intention than the group with low barriers and high hope (β = .65, p < .05). Additionally, job satisfaction showed a significant negative relationship with turnover intention (β = - .60, p < .05). Further analysis showed that turnover intention decreased as economic self-sufficiency increased with higher levels of job satisfaction. Conversely, turnover intention increased with lower levels of job satisfaction as economic self-sufficiency increased (β = - .26, p < .05).

Conclusions and Implications: This study sheds light on the dynamics of attributes affecting turnover intention within the home care sector, particularly concerning career advancement perceptions, economic self-sufficiency, and job satisfaction. The findings underscore the need for targeted interventions to remove structural barriers to career advancement thereby reducing the turnover intention among home care workers. To enhance job satisfaction and decrease turnover intention, social work services and policies focused on incumbent workers must prioritize initiatives aimed at dismantling career advancement barriers for marginalized home care workers based on race, gender, and income.