The Influence of Belongingness on Job Satisfaction and Retention Among Child Welfare Workers

Background: Retention of child welfare workers is a consistent and prevalent challenge. An annual turnover rate at or below 12% is considered optimal in the health and human services sectors, yet in child welfare services, it is estimated to be between 20% and 40%. Extensive research has examined factors contributing to turnover and intent to leave in child welfare, including burnout, secondary trauma stress, high work demands, job stress, heavy workload, and moral distress. While more recent work has examined various factors that encourage child welfare workers to stay in their jobs, the role of belongingness in worker retention has been largely overlooked. Belongingness refers to the fundamental human need to feel included, accepted as a member of a group, and connected through interpersonal relationships. Organizational belongingness plays a critical role in supporting worker well-being and healthy social functioning and has been linked to higher job satisfaction and positive organizational climate. In this study, we investigate the emerging research area of organizational belongingness and its relationship with organizational climate and intent to remain within the child welfare workforce.

Methods: This work includes data collected as part of a federally funded multisite child welfare workforce improvement project. Data was collected using the Comprehensive Organizational Health Assessment (COHA), which features more than 25 validated measures capturing various aspects of child welfare workforce well-being, including organizational climate and belongingness. This study includes a sub-sample of caseworkers from the larger study who completed COHA data collected from a single site in a northeastern county (N = 379). Using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and structural equation modeling, a mediation model was conducted to examine the relationships of organizational climate (exogenous predictor), job satisfaction and intent to stay (endogenous outcomes), and belongingness (latent mediating variable).

Results: EFA indicated that belongingness was separated into two distinct factors, positive belongingness and negative belongingness and findings revealed that organizational climate significantly affected job satisfaction and intent to stay through both positive and negative belongingness. Positive belongingness, characterized by feelings of inclusion and connection, was associated with higher job satisfaction, whereas negative belongingness, marked by rejection and disconnection, was linked to lower job satisfaction. Notably, the study found that negative belongingness fully mediated the relationship between organizational climate and intent to stay.

Conclusions and Implications: The current study is one of the first to shed light on the key role of organizational belongingness in child welfare agencies. Findings demonstrated that organizational climate significantly influenced job satisfaction and intent to stay through the mediating roles of positive and negative belongingness. In the context of child welfare, often a high-stress and emotionally demanding environment, this study’s findings suggest that fostering a sense of belonging and addressing negative belongingness could enhance workers’ job satisfaction and maintain a committed workforce. Findings also suggest that interventions aimed at improving organizational climate need to consider strategies to enhance belongingness to support child welfare worker retention. Policy and practice implications will be discussed.