Employer‐sponsored programmes for the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS: Recent experience from sub‐Saharan Africa

This article examines a sample of employer programmes in sub‐Saharan Africa that supplement government efforts to prevent and treat human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Some of these programmes provide workers with in‐house education, voluntary HIV testing and antiretroviral treatment. Others rely on new forms of employment‐based group health insurance that include an HIV treatment package. In addition, some enterprises use the workplace as a platform for launching efforts into neighbouring communities to reach spouses, children, sex workers, secondary school students and others. Early evidence suggests that employer programmes maintain the health of large fractions of workers living with HIV who are served by them. They further enable enterprises to avoid productivity losses and turnover costs associated with HIV. At the same time, they take pressure off government agencies that face demands for treatment far exceeding their capacity. The article identifies features of successful employer programmes including “elite appeal”, which mobilizes community leaders and role models to deconstruct stigma, change perceptions and call for behavioural change; and “collateral linkage”, which extends the reach of HIV workplace programmes by linking them to related community concerns: e.g. alcohol abuse, malaria and domestic violence. Looking forward, the potential for expanding employer programmes as well as the restrictions associated with the limited scale of formal‐sector employment within sub‐Saharan African economies is assessed. Actions by which governments, employer associations, trade unions and international organizations can encourage further development of such programmes and extend their reach are suggested.     

Pathways from workplace flexibility to turnover intention: Role of work–family conflict,family–work conflict,and job satisfaction

This study examined the prevalence of workplace flexibility and the mechanisms that allow workplace flexibility to influence turnover intentions through work–family and family–work conflicts and job satisfaction among low‐wage workers in South Korea. Participants included 250 low‐wage workers whose monthly salary was less than 2 million Korean won (approx. $1,900). The study results indicate that low‐wage workers have limited access to workplace flexibility and that workplace flexibility plays a significant protective role in reducing their turnover intention, indirectly by decreasing work–family conflicts and enhancing job satisfaction. This article also discusses the implications of these findings for labor policy and social work practice.     

Paths towards Family‐friendly Working Time Arrangements: Comparing Workplaces in Different Countries and Industries

Although studies have examined the distribution and conditions of employer‐provided work–family arrangements, we still lack a systematic investigation of how these vary for different countries and industries. Based on the European Working Conditions Survey 2010, this study examines the conditions under which firms provide family‐friendly working time arrangements and what the differences are across four countries (Austria, Denmark, Italy and the UK) and four industries. The impact of employee representatives, employee involvement, manager support and female managers varies across countries and industries because of the institutional environment (prevailing family model, industrial relations) and workforce composition (gender). The impact of employee representatives depends on their co‐determination rights, and the direction of their effect on the prevailing family model (e.g. negative in conservative countries such as Austria) and the gender composition of the workforce (negative in male‐dominated production, but positive in services). Employee involvement in the work organization is significantly positive in Austria and Denmark (both with co‐operative industrial relations), while manager support has the strongest effect in the UK (liberal regime). At the industry level, female supervisors are positively associated with family‐friendly working time arrangements only in the male‐dominated production industry. These findings suggest that the effects of agency variables and their direction vary depending on the institutional context.     

Why Are They Leaving? Factors Affecting Intention to Leave among Social Workers in Child Welfare

This article addresses a topic that has not previously beenresearched in Sweden, i.e. factors associated with the intentionof social workers to leave their place of work. A comprehensivequestionnaire was distributed to 309 social workers in childwelfare in the County of Stockholm (drop-out rate: 3 per cent).The study comprised a total of forty-two workgroups. All thesocial workers handling referrals and investigating the situationof children and youth in these areas were included. One of themost striking results was that although 54 per cent of the socialworkers had been at their current workplace for two years orless, 48 per cent intended to leave their jobs. A logistic regressionanalysis showed that the variable of greatest importance forthe intention to leave the workplace was lack of human resourceorientation within the organization, i.e. the extent to whichpersonnel are rewarded for a job well done, feel well takencare of and where management is interested in their health andwell-being. A final conclusion of this study is that when measuringthe impact of different aspects of work tasks compared withsome aspects of organizational culture, it becomes clear thatthe latter seem to be most important in this respect.     

Examining the Relationship between Domestic Violence and Depression among Koreans: The Role of Self‐esteem and Social Support as Mediators

Domestic violence is a prevalent social issue in Korea affecting a significant number of people every day. It is thus important to examine how the experience of domestic violence affects their mental health to better address their needs. Using stress‐coping theory as a theoretical framework, this study examines the domestic violence and depression relationship among Korean men and women. Two aspects of self‐esteem and informal and formal social support are examined as potential mediators of this relationship. The data was the first wave of Korean Welfare Panel Study data including 2477 individuals with experiences of abuse. Structural equation modeling procedures were used for analyses. Domestic violence was significantly associated with self‐worth, self‐deprecation, and depression. The experiences of violence eroded self‐worth while reinforcing self‐deprecation and those with more exposure to violence showed a higher level of depression. Self‐deprecation played a significant role in mediating the effect of domestic violence on depression. However, different findings were yielded for social support. While informal social support was significantly associated with domestic violence, formal social support was not associated with domestic violence. Findings suggest for mental health interventions targeting self‐esteem, particularly the diminution of self‐deprecation in working with the victims. Suggestions for future research and implications for social work are also discussed.     

Social work in a conflict context: Challenges facing social workers with indigenous inhabitants of unrecognised villages in Israel

This qualitative study presents the experiences of social workers whose clients are the inhabitants of unrecognised Bedouin Arab villages in Israel. It used in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews with 25 participants, recruited by the snowball method. These social workers reported that they are caught between their personal and professional values, on the one hand, and employer regulations, government policy and government law, on the other – which greatly limits their ability to fulfil their professional role. The social workers also comment that they are working in a ‘grey area’ in which the government’s policy is unclear. This adds another layer of complexity to their work and reveals the differential implementation of critical social work principles by social workers with different cultural identities.     

Social Workers' Perceptions of Training Preparedness and Social Justice Norms on Workplace Empowerment

This study examined the relationship between (a) social workers' perceptions of preparedness to perform in their professional roles and perceived social justice behaviors at work and (b) workers' sense of workplace empowerment. A sample of 152 currently licensed social workers responded to web or mailed surveys. Respondents were more likely to perceive having workplace empowerment related to meaning in their work if they reported their social work program training prepared them for their professional roles. Perceived social justice behaviors at work were associated with workers' experiencing empowerment related to the impact they had at work. Social workers' sense of training preparedness and experiencing social justice at work can positively influence workers' perceived empowerment. Enforcing the importance of engaging in social justice with clients in social work education, both in class and in field placements, has the potential for long-lasting effects on empowerment in students' future workplaces. Agency-level management should ensure continuity in social justice activities to enhance feelings of workplace empowerment, which may help social workers connect with clients. Future research should examine elements of social work programs that promote feelings of empowerment in order to understand how the same approach can be used in models of continuing education and organizational management.     

The Work Experiences of Social Workers: Factors Impacting Compassion Satisfaction and Workplace Stress

Abstract

In 2015, over 6,000 licensed social workers in 13?US states responded to an online survey regarding perceptions and feelings about their work, as well as numerous personal and practice issues. Specifically, this study examined participants’ levels of compassion satisfaction and workplace stress, and then determined through multivariate analyses what demographic factors, behavioral and physical health problems, practice issues, fields of practice, and workplace environment issues impacted these two variables.

The findings indicate that participants demonstrated high levels of compassion satisfaction, with a wide range of workplace stress levels. Workplace environment issues had the greatest impact on both variables, with social workers’ mental health problems, physical health status, and certain demographic factors such as race also influencing them. Over 82% of respondents expressed agreement that they were glad that they chose social work as a profession. The results appear to demonstrate that despite being a potentially stressful occupation, licensed social workers tend to experience significant emotional satisfaction from their work. On the other hand, the results also highlight the need for further research to determine how to enhance support for social workers in the workplace in order to not only reduce workplace stress, but also to increase compassion satisfaction.     

Stress and Pressures in Mental Health Social Work: The Worker Speaks

Two-thirds of councils with social services responsibilities(CSSRs) took part in a UK survey of mental health social workers.A one in five sample of front line workers was drawn, and 237respondents completed a questionnaire and diary about theirwork context and content, and their attitudes to their work,their employer, mental health policy and the place of mentalhealth social work in modernized mental health services. Thequestions, that called for free-text responses, were completedin detail and at length. This paper reports the results of aqualitative analysis of these responses using NVIVO software.The paper is structured around the themes emerging from theanalysis: pressure of work; staffing matters; job satisfactionand well-being; recruitment and retention issues; and beingvalued. The conclusions are that the social workers value faceto face contact with service users, and that their commitmentto service users is an important factor in staff retention.The most unsatisfactory aspects of their work context arisefrom not feeling valued by their employers and wider society,and some of the most satisfactory from the support of colleaguesand supervisors. Without attention to these factors, recruitmentand retention problems will remain an unresolved issue.     

It's frustrating! Managing emotional dissonance in aged care work

Performing paid care work requires workers to simultaneously negotiate care and waged relationships. Mediating contradictions between the two often causes workers to experience frustration, a form of emotional dissonance. Drawing on semi‐structured interviews with 100 workers in Australian aged care organisations, this research identifies aspects of the work environment that enable care workers to successfully juggle or synthesise the emotional demands of their work. The research demonstrates that employers have an important role in alleviating frustration, and can do this by creating work environments which: give care workers relative autonomy; allow care workers to construct themselves as professional carers providing quality care; provide workers with support to manage their emotions and develop emotional resilience; and promote client recognition of workers' roles. Providing such work environments has the potential to not only alleviate workers' frustration, but also to increase job satisfaction and retain workers in aged care.     

《劳动合同法》之错的社会法学解析——个别劳动法的局限与集体劳动法的倚重

我国以《劳动合同法》为代表的个别劳动法具有特别私法的本质属性,它主要将劳动关系当做用人单位与劳动者之间的个体利益冲突来处理,进而以劳动者个体向用人单位主张权益以及权益遭受侵害后寻求司法救济的机制来运行。个别劳动法并不能强制用人单位履行劳动法为保护劳动者权益而设定的义务,劳动者个体大多选择放弃维权导致法律保护不能直接辐射到劳动者集体（特别是无法给予劳动者积极、有效的预防性保护）,鼓励劳动者个体积极实施＂私人执法＂,特别是主张劳动合同无效带有很强的悖论色彩。故此,倚重集体劳动法调整劳动关系是未来我国劳动法的必由之路。     

Work Life and Social Fulfillment: Does Social Affiliation at Work Reflect a Carrot or a Stick?*

Objectives. Work life and home life appear to be in increasing competition for scarce time and attention. Does the workplace offer a social haven for people? And if so, for whom is it most attractive? Or does the increasing affiliation with work life result from heightened job insecurity, which demands that employees focus on work in order to keep their jobs? Methods. In this article we analyze a unique data set incorporating all book‐length workplace ethnographies (N=149) to address these questions. This data set provides rich measures of social life at work and related correlates. Results. We find that rich social lives are common at work and that these correlate strongly with fulfillment, pride, and meaning in work. Well‐paid employees are much more likely to experience a rich social life at work than are lower‐level employees. Job security appears to be a relative constant, unrelated to the richness of social life on the job. Men are more socially involved at work than women, reflecting their greater average involvement in work life relative to family life. This relationship, however, does not hold net of controls, suggesting that it reflects underlying differences in the jobs men and women hold. Conclusions. These findings suggest a bifurcated labor force in which upper‐status employees reap both greater material and greater social rewards from their jobs and, as a result, are more drawn to work, and to workaholism, than lower‐status workers.     

It's More Than an M‐shape: The Political Economy of Female Non‐Standard Workers in the Republic of Korea

This study examines the re‐entrance of female workers into the Korean labor market. We highlight that women in their 40s have the highest rate of employment among all female workers and that a large proportion of these women are entering into non‐standard employment. In approaching this question, we examine the political economy of this phenomenon by first discussing the demand side of the Korean labor market using the gendering of the varieties of capitalism argument and then the supply side with the work–life balance argument. When examining re‐entrance into the labor market, women with general skills with lower education and higher education both found it more feasible to re‐enter the labor market as non‐standard workers. While work–life balance is a prominent reason for women's choice of opting out of the labor market, work–life balance choice mattered less for women re‐entering the labor market as non‐standard workers in their 40s and 50s but instead firmly based skill formation mattered more. In addition, the retail service industry is suggested to absorb a large number of female workers with lower skill levels who would have had difficulties in re‐entering other male‐oriented companies.     

Burnout in Chinese social work: Differential predictability of the components of the Maslach Burnout Inventory

Burnout is a worldwide phenomenon among social welfare workers. This study examined how burnout affects student social workers and professional social workers. It first examined the construct validity of the Maslach Burnout Inventory‐General Survey (MBI‐GS) scale, using data from two Chinese samples (848 student social workers and 748 professional social workers). The original three‐factor model was regarded as superior to other competing models. Investigation of the second‐order factor model indicated that exhaustion and cynicism are core components but that personal efficacy is not. The research also revealed the differential predictability of the three subscales of the MBI‐GS. Our expectation that differential patterns of effects could be predicted was largely supported. Professional efficacy plays a key mediating role in the relationship between student social workers’ professional identity and their satisfaction with fieldwork, while social workers’ cynicism is the main mediator in the relationship between their professional identity and turnover intention. Therefore, identifying at‐risk students and professional social workers to undertake appropriate intervention strategies that focus on both their professional identity and different dimensions of burnout may be an effective way to prevent students’ dissatisfaction and reduce social worker turnover.     

Social welfare services staff burnout in Cyprus: Who is responsible?

This is the first study to explore among social welfare services staff in Cyprus the main stress factors that lead to burnout. Using focus groups, the study explored and analysed the perceptions of 120 social welfare services staff members. The aim of the focus group meetings was to identify methods that could minimise the risk of employee burnout. The main stressors that participants experienced were: inadequate appreciation from the management, lack of support and guidance, lack of autonomy, complex responsibilities, lack of recognition and respect in their workplace, low self‐confidence, low self‐respect and feelings of rejection. Participants suggested that continuous education and training could reduce work stress; for example, new knowledge, the development of new skills, the improvement of their ability to prioritise tasks and become organised and the improvement of self‐criticism and self‐knowledge.     

Family Provisions at the Workplace and Their Relationship to Absenteeism,Retention, and Productivity of Workers: Timely Evidence from Prior Data

Using data from the Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey, this study provides timely evidence on the effects of on‐site child care at the workplace and employer‐provided family leave on worker absenteeism, turnover, and productivity. The study found that workplaces with on‐site child care compared with workplaces with no on‐site child care had lower rates of absenteeism and higher ratings for worker productivity. Workplaces that had a family leave policy also had lower rates of absenteeism than workplaces that had no such policy in place. Analyses also suggest that workplace characteristics, such as presence of a human‐resources manager or union representative, are associated with higher worker productivity. Firm size, mission, and shift work were other predictors of worker performance. The findings argue strongly for an extensive, new workplace survey that can elucidate how parents today manage to abide by new workplace agreements while still handling the demands of family life.     

Women's Experience of the Workers Compensation System

A phenomenological study was undertaken to understand women's experience of the workers compensation system. Eleven women were interviewed. They ranged in age from twenty‐five to sixty‐five years and represented diverse socio‐economic and educational backgrounds. All women were from a non‐indigenous background. The initial question to women was “Can you tell me what it is like to be involved in the workers' compensation system?” The narratives were analysed and interpreted using Hycner's (1985) phenomenological guidelines. The knowledge embedded in the interviews, expressed through core stories and themes, was essential to making women's voices visible and provide insight into service delivery based on women's experiences and needs. Four core themes were found: negative versus positive experiences, the workplace response and role in the process, women's experiences of payouts, and reasons why women may not claim workers' compensation. The women indicated that the workers compensation process was a disincentive to making a claim. WorkCover was viewed as siding with the employer, bureaucratic in nature and lacking values associated with empathy, sympathy and caring. Recommendations for improvements to the workers compensation system included to establish legal obligations and enforcement of occupational health and safety responsibilities to injured and to ill workers; adoption of occupational health and safety values by employers; change the attitudes of employers (recognising women as breadwinners and that workers are not disposable); a single case manager to advocate for injured or ill workers; recognition of mental and emotional consequences of an injury or illness; provision of rehabilitation that recognises mental and emotional factors as well as the importance of family participation; greater involvement of employers and employees in the rehabilitation process; and finally, improved service delivery that involves consistency, ethics, clarity (regarding the WorkCover process for injured workers and employers), accountability and involvement of all parties.     

‘Doing it right?’– accessing the narratives of identity of newly qualified social workers through the lens of resilience: ‘I am,I have,I can’

Using narrative enquiry, this paper accesses the construct of identity through exploring resilience in newly qualified social workers based in statutory children's services. In seeking to avoid deficit‐based models of this role, this paper aims to present inductively the ‘voice’ of three social workers in a semi‐rural authority, storying the positive ways in which resilience has developed during their first year. Using the Grotberg resilience framework (1995) –‘I am, I have, I can’– as an analytical tool at the interface of personal, professional and organizational identities, we conclude that ‘I am’ and ‘I have’ are more important than the skills dimension of ‘I can’. Positive role models, trust, ‘managed’ optimism, flexibility of support in and beyond induction, and, crucially, self‐efficacy and space for reflexivity, are more prominent as sources of resilience and strong identity. The reflexivity, inspired by the process of narrative enquiry, is an important contributor to self‐efficacy. We propose that a positive view of growth and identity is preferable to deficit models in the context of the transition between the two ‘communities of practice’ and of the challenges of the workplace. Organizational approaches based on this view will be more likely to promote a sustainable workforce.     

The Differential Wage Impact of the Immigration Reform and Control Act on Latino Ethnic Subgroups*

Objective. This article tests whether employer sanctions for hiring undocumented workers, a provision of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), adversely affected the hourly earnings of Latino workers. Methods. Using the Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotation Group Files from 1983–1990, a natural experiment framework is developed to assess the differential wage impact of employer sanctions on Latino ethnic subgroups. Results. Estimates of wage changes indicate that workers of Mexican descent saw a sizeable pre‐post IRCA decline in their hourly earnings relative to Cuban or Puerto Rican workers. Moreover, this change in wages is not observed among non‐Latino white workers. Controlling for the level of enforcement explains part of this decline immediately following the passage of IRCA, and enforcement efforts continue to be a significant factor several years later. Conclusions. The majority of evidence is consistent with the contention that employer sanctions adversely affected the earnings of Mexican workers.