A Longitudinal Look at Organizational Cultural Competence Effects on Child Welfare Workers' Intent to Stay: The Mediating Effect of Job Satisfaction

Background/Purpose: Organizational cultural competence (OCC) indicates an organization’s ongoing efforts to promote diversity and equity within its workforce and enhance the well-being of diverse cultural groups that the organization serves. OCC in child welfare agencies is critical for promoting trust, delivering high-quality services, and improving outcomes for children and families. It could also benefit child welfare workers, given the research demonstrating that worker-level cultural competence improves workers’ confidence in assisting children and families from diverse cultural backgrounds. To address the gap in understanding potential OCC benefits for workers, this study examines the effects of OCC on child welfare worker attitudes and outcomes.

Methods: This study used data from the statewide, longitudinal Florida Study of Professionals for Safe Families, which surveyed newly hired child welfare workers every six months. The analysis sample comprised 367 workers who completed the survey at six months (T2), 12 months (T3), and 18 months (T4) post-hire, and remained in their baseline agency for 18 months. OCC was measured using six-items assessing the frequency of OCC practices (e.g., maintaining diverse staff) on a five-point Likert scale. Job satisfaction (JS) was measured with a six-point Likert scale assessing agreement level regarding JS-communication (e.g., goal clarity), JS-nature of work (e.g., enjoyment, pride), and JS-supervision (e.g., fairness, support). Using SPSS 30.0 with PROCESS macro 4.2 and bootstrapping estimation based on 5,000 resamples, the study investigated the three JS domains at T3 as parallel mediators of the relationship between perceptions of OCC at T2 and intent to stay in the agency at T4. Worker gender, race/ethnicity, age, education level, social work degree status, job category, and caseload were included as covariates.

Results: Workers reported moderately high OCC perceptions (M = 2.08, SD = .74, range 0-3). Direct effects were significant for OCC at T2 as a predictor of T3 JS-communication (β=.293, p<.001); JS-nature of work (β=.126, p<.01); and JS-supervision (β=.113, p<.05); and for JS-nature of work at T3 as a predictor of intent to stay at T4 (β=.604, p<.001). OCC at T2 did not directly predict intent to stay at T4; however, the indirect effect of OCC at T2 on intent to stay at T4 through JS-nature of work at T3 was significant (β=.076, 95% CI [.028, .138]).

Conclusions/Implications: This study shows that child welfare agencies’ efforts to strengthen OCC have benefits that extend beyond improving client services. Specifically, child welfare workers’ favorable perception of their agency’s OCC promotes satisfaction with the nature of their work, thereby increasing their intent to stay with the agency. Perhaps OCC increases satisfaction with a nature of work component such as pride in the work, which in turn increases staying intentions. Potential agency strategies to improve OCC to support both clients and workers include ensuring that recruitment, hiring, and retention practices; client materials and resources; and agency physical environment reflect ethnic/cultural diversity, and that translations and interpretation assistance accommodate language diversity. In addition to routine evaluations of the cultural competence of client services, agencies should also examine the effects of their OCC strategies on workers.