Creating conditions for sustainable employment is important and urgent for social care service organizations who often face challenges in the work environment and with competence supply. Based on the framework of Job Demands‐Resources theory, we investigated how organizational efforts to prioritize employee health (i.e., Psychosocial Safety Climate PSC) and promote conditions for quality of work (QW) relate to indicators for sustainable employment in terms of employee work engagement (WE) and organizational commitment (OC). Furthermore, we investigated if these associations in part are explained by proactive work behavior among employees (i.e., job crafting JC). Using a web‐based survey, self‐reports were collected from 607 municipal social care service employees. The results of regression‐based analyses (mediation analyses: PROCESS v.4.2) showed that the respective effect of PSC and QW on WE was partially mediated by JC–seeking challenges and JC–seeking resources, whereas the effect of PSC and QW on OC was found to be partially mediated by JC–seeking resources. The results contribute with insights to meet challenges in competence supply in social and elderly care services. Specifically, the results highlight that to create conditions for sustainable employment as indicated by WE and OC, organizations need to prioritize employees’ health and safety (PSC) and provide opportunities for QW and also promote precondition and possibilities for employees to engage in proactive work behavior (JC)—especially to craft and build resources at work.
Geisler et al. (Thu,) studied this question.