Working Conditions Affecting Home Care Workers' Stress and Turnover Intention

Abstract

This study explored how working conditions influence the psychological outcomes of paid family and non-family home care workers, focusing on the interaction between institutional and recipient effects. Using data from the 2019 Korean Long-Term Care Survey (N = 998), we performed regression analyses on home care workers' stress and turnover intention. For both types of home care-workers, inadequate working conditions and high occupational hazards influenced stress, while good working conditions and low occupational hazards influenced turnover intention. Overall, the findings suggest that wages, working hours, and work intensity must be reformed in a home care-worker-friendly manner; the wages for home care workers must be raised to a level appropriate to their care work; the services provided by home care workers should be explicitly stipulated; and, to eliminate occupational hazards, environments for fostering cordial relationships between recipients and home care workers must be developed.