An exploration of organisational conditions and psychosocial work factors of long-term care workers in self-managing teams

Recent studies on long-term care workers suggest that working in self-managing teams provides psychosocial work factors that potentially promote health and well-being. The success of self-managing teams, and therefore their potential to provide beneficial psychosocial work factors, depends on organisational conditions (related to the structure, human resources, and technology). This study aimed to uncover how organisational conditions affect psychosocial work factors of long-term care workers in self-managing teams by identifying the underlying mechanisms that connect these conditions to changes in psychosocial work factors. An exploratory, qualitative design was adopted. Over the course of three months, we conducted 23 semi-structured interviews with long-term care workers and organisational representatives of a medium-sized long-term care organisation in the Netherlands. We applied content analysis, combining inductive and deductive methods. Within these three organisational conditions, we identified six sub-conditions and the mechanisms through which they affect psychosocial work factors. For the structure, these mechanisms related to small team size, self-scheduling, informal leadership, large regulatory space, and collaboration between self-managing teams and allied health professionals, top-level management, support services, and other self-managing teams. For human resources, these mechanisms related to understanding of self-management, attitude towards self-management, awareness of training needs, conducting performance appraisals, proficiency in regulatory tasks, and satisfaction with salary. For technology, the mechanisms related to the use of digital tools. This study indicates how a set of organisational conditions affect psychosocial work factors through diverse mechanisms, inducing both positive and negative changes. These mechanisms often display challenges in leadership, understanding of self-management, and self-management competencies. Our findings contribute to scholarly literature on the psychosocial work factors of long-term care workers and highlight which organisational conditions warrant further investigation.