Factors influencing the intention to leave among care workers of nursing home in Klang Valley

Malaysia will face rapid ageing population for the next few decades. This issue is followed by the increasing demand of nursing homes services in order to take care of the old people. Unfortunately, the shortage of care workers in nursing homes in Malaysia is currently ongoing problems in the health care industries. The shortage happened due to the turnover of the care workers. It is crucial to study the issue of intention to leave since it has been found to be a strong predictor of turnover. Hence, this study was aimed to investigate the relationship between the factors of work environment (leadership, staffing resources and adequacy, teamwork), work stress (conflict and lack of recognition, workload, lack of preparation), care worker outcome (emotional exhaustion, physical problem, affective organisational commitment) and external job market (perceived competitive pay, perceived job alternatives) and the intention to leave among care workers of nursing homes in Klang Valley. A cross-sectional study was carried out among care workers of nursing homes in Klang Valley, Malaysia. A self-administered questionnaire was used to assess the independent variables and dependent variable. Cluster sampling technique also has been used in this study. Pearson Correlation Coefficient and Multiple Linear Regression were conducted by using statistical tool IBM SPSS 23.0. Out of 150 questionnaires distributed, 122 questionnaires were returned, resulted to 81.3% response rate. Positive relationships were seen between the factors of conflict and lack of recognition, workload, lack of preparation, emotional exhaustion, physical problems, perceived job alternatives and negative relationship with leadership, staffing resources and adequacy, affective organisational commitment and the intention to leave. However, there was no relationship between the factors of teamwork and perceived competitive pay and the intention to leave. Overall, this study demonstrated that work stress factor was the most influential factor, which was strongly and positively related to the intention to leave among care workers of nursing homes in Klang Valley. Hence, practitioners of nursing homes must critically understand and create strategic ways to minimise the work stress among care workers. This study will help the practitioners of nursing homes to retain care workers of nursing homes. Further research is needed to identify other factors that can influence the intention to leave among care workers of nursing homes such as burnout, relationships at work and job-characteristic.