The impact of management on the engagement and well-being of high emotional labour employees

Abstract

Australia, like many other countries, suffers high turnover of nurses and police officers. Contributions to effectively managing the turnover challenge have been called for, and there are few Australian studies of nursing/policing turnover intentions. The purpose was to examine the impact of supervisor-subordinate relationships and perceived organisational support upon engagement, wellbeing, organizational commitment and turnover intentions. Second, we examined similarities and differences between nursing and policing work contexts. The retention of nurses/police has been investigated from traditional management perspectives; however we used a different theoretical approach - Social Exchange Theory - and evaluated its utility as a framework. Findings are from Australian data collected during 2010-11 from 510 nurses and 193 police officers, using a survey-based, self-report strategy. Partial Least Squares Path Modeling was used to analyse this data. Results indicated that for both samples, engagement predicts wellbeing and then, wellbeing predicts affective commitment and intentions to leave. MANOVA results suggested that nurses had significantly higher levels of satisfaction with their supervisor-subordinate relationships, perceived organisational support, engagement, wellbeing and affective commitment, than police officers. Only the intention to leave was similar for both groups. Given that turnover can be influenced by supervisors/management, this study provides new knowledge about targeted retention strategies.