The Association between work values, professional ideology and personal characteristics to job satisfaction among community and caseworkers social workers

Job satisfaction is the measurement of positive emotional orientation of workers towards their workplace (Vroom, 1964), and is a function of the conceived association between what a person wants from their job and what he conceives that their job offers them (Locke, 1969 ; Nathan, 2009).

Dawson (2005) thinks that a worker’s satisfaction causes positive behavior at the workplace. Ward and Sloane (2000) argue that a worker’s level of satisfaction is connected to other phenomenon's in their professional live, specifically, absence, leaving a place of work and the worker’s level of productivity. The researchers note that it’s possible to predict a worker’s future behavior by their reported level of satisfaction.

In the last decades, various researches looked into the issue of work satisfaction in regards to the social work occupation (Cole, Panchanadeswaran, & Daining, 2004). Work satisfaction was tested among social workers in health (Huxley et al, 2005), child healthcare (Mor Barak, Levin, Nissly & Lane, 2006), hospitals (Nelson & Merighi, 2003; Newman, 2003; Pockett, 2003), nursing (Gleason-Winn & Mindel, 1999) and other organizational features (Acquavita, Pittman, Gibbons and Castellanos-Brown, 2009).

Furthermore, the social services, including healthcare, in Israel and worldwide are going through extensive changes in the last decades (Benish, 2012). It seems that social workers’ state of mind is characterized by two main aspects. On the one hand they choose the profession and perform their duties with dedication for many years. On the other hand, they feel unrewarded and face challenges that pit their own values and needs against the service given their clients. These issues affect their work dissatisfaction. That is why it is important to check work satisfaction among private and community social workers, as well as other variants that contribute to the level of satisfaction or dissatisfaction.

Therefore, the current research seeks to deepen the knowledge of this subject, based on the range of influences model (Locke, 1976). According to this model, the level of satisfaction is a result of the suitability between a person’s expectations from their work and their achievements. The model’s complexity also points to the suitability between the person’s values, motives, goals and needs that they want to express in their work and the way they’re actually being expressed (Locke, 1969 ; Lev-Dahan, 2013).

In trying to find the factors that point to social workers’ satisfaction from their work, and based on the theoretical model, the following variants were chosen: Personal features – Gender, experience (veterans or new), professional ideology, and work value concepts among private social workers and community social workers. Additionally, the area of occupation (private work and community work) was also tested as a moderating variant between work value concepts and the dependent variable – work satisfaction.

The research assumptions were that associations between personal features and work satisfaction will be found: women and long-time workers will show higher work satisfaction. The question was also asked whether differences will be found in work satisfaction levels between private social workers and community social workers: a higher level of professional ideology will point to higher satisfaction. Finally, it was assumed that a association will be found between work value concepts and work satisfaction: 1) the higher the extrinsic work values are, the lower the work satisfaction will be. 2) The higher intrinsic work values are, the higher the work satisfaction will be. The area of occupation (private and communal) was tested as a moderating variable for the associations between the two variables.

This research is a quantitative-correlative research. 317 social workers from all over the country participated in the research, 234 of them work in private social work and 83 work in community social work. The data was gathered by self-report questionnaires, through personal requests to participate in the research, among which requests were made to the social workers union on social media and to healthcare bureaus all over country.

For the purposes of testing the research assumptions correlations were calculated between the research variables via a Pearson test. Additionally, differences between groups were calculated via a T-test, and differentiation tests were performed.

Testing the total contribution of the research variables to explain the differentiation of the dependent variable in the research (work satisfaction) in relying on the independent variables (personal features: gender, experience, professional ideology and work value concepts) were performed by linear regression analysis. Additionally the following demographic variants were tested in the regression equation to check the overall contribution to explain the differentiation: number of children and number of years of education. Finally, the PROCESS procedure was used to test whether the type of occupation variant is a moderating variant to the association between work value concepts and work satisfaction. The data gathered was calculated via the SPSS program.

According to the research assumptions and questions above, the main research findings are that no differences were found between gender and work satisfaction. Although, work experience is related and even explains the differentiation in satisfaction among social workers. The longer the experience, the higher both the extrinsic and intrinsic work satisfaction were. This finding strengthens the fact that veteran social workers are more satisfied in their work conditions, are freer to work in their chosen occupation, to thoroughly experience it personally and give the best service to their customers. Also, no differences were found between work areas and work satisfaction. In testing the association between professional ideology and work satisfaction it was found that social workers who employ the professional ideology – strengthening the social justice of the occupation during their work – are more satisfied in their work than those who don’t employ it. It seems that their work fits into their internal world of values, which heightens their work satisfaction. Furthermore, no association was found between professional ideology and external work satisfaction.

Following the review of the research findings, it was found that social workers who value the instrumental work values (external rewards, such as terms of employment and salary) are less satisfied of their work. This finding strengthens the fact that external rewards are related to work satisfaction and may weaken it. It was also found that social workers who value intrinsic work value concepts and are satisfied with the intrinsic rewards of their work are more satisfied of their work in their chosen occupation. It appears that the intrinsic rewards from the occupation are expressed by the internal world of values, so their work satisfaction is higher.

In this framework and in regards to checking the research variants’ contribution to explaining the difference of the dependent variable, it was found that the seniority variant contributed 3.3% in explaining the difference in the external work satisfaction variant. Also, it contributed 4.7% in explaining the difference in the intrinsic work satisfaction variant. Furthermore, the professional ideology variant also contributed to explaining the difference both in external work satisfaction (3.8%) and in intrinsic work satisfaction (3.0%). Also, the work value conceptualization variant contributed to explaining the differences: instrumental work values (5.6%), emotional work values (1.2%) and cognitive-intrinsic work values (4.2%). Finally, the association between work value conceptualization and work satisfaction was tested in the presence of the chosen profession variant (private and community).

Varied interactions were found between private social workers and community social workers regarding the connection between work value concepts (by different aspects: instrumental, emotional and cognitive) and intrinsic and external work satisfaction. Private social workers reported higher instrumental work value concepts and lower work satisfaction. Furthermore, community social workers reported higher emotional and cognitive (intrinsic) work value concepts and higher work satisfaction, as opposed a moderate association between private social workers.

This research is of both theoretic and applicable importance. Practically, the research findings emphasize the importance of maintaining the factors that are related to high satisfaction, such as professional ideology, intrinsic work value concepts (intrinsic rewards from work). Additionally, the research findings illuminate the subject of external rewards, among which are salary, terms of employment and the levels of satisfaction of young people in the occupation – factors that point to a lack of satisfaction among social workers.

Based on Lock’s range of influences model (1976) and testing the associations between a person’s values, motivations, characterization and goals and their profession, the theoretical contribution of this research is in innovation and the expansion of knowledge in literature about associations between personal features (gender and work experience), professional ideology and work value concepts and work satisfaction among private social workers and community social workers.