Examining Factors Associated With Minority Turnover Intention in State and Local Public Health Organizations: The Moderating Role of Race in the Relationship Among Supervisory Support, Job Satisfaction, and Turnover Intention.

Abstract

Context: There is a need to understand minority governmental public health workforce turnover to ensure the retention of public health minority workers, capitalize on diversity benefits, and enhance public health's capacity to serve diverse populations.

Objective: This study assesses the moderating effect of minority health workers' race on (1) the relationship between the workforce environment, particularly employees' perceptions of their pay and supervisory support on job satisfaction, and (2) the relationship between job satisfaction and turnover intentions.

Design: Using the 2017 Public Health Workforce Interests and Needs Survey (PH WINS), a cross-sectional survey of the public health workforce, a hierarchical logistic regression modeling technique was used to assess the moderating role of race on the relationship between supervisory support, pay and job satisfaction, and turnover intentions.

Setting and participants: The PH WINS survey data from state and local health department employees.

Main outcome measure: Job satisfaction, pay, supervisory support, and turnover intention.

Results: Job satisfaction was found to mediate the relationship between the work environment factors of pay satisfaction and supervisory support and turnover. Our findings also suggest that while race moderates the influence of compensation and supervisory support on job satisfaction, race has no moderating effect on the job satisfaction-turnover intentions relationship.

Conclusions: A focus on boosting job satisfaction, particularly through pay equity and perceived support, may reduce turnover among minority public health personnel.