WORKING IN ELDERCARE FACILITIES: THE RELATIONSHIP AMONG ATTITUDE, EMOTIONAL LABOR AND WORK-LIFE BALANCE SATISFACTION

Aim: Aging population in whole world brings an increasing demand for care settings for older people. This increasing demand leads a rise in employee need who can work in this area. Particularly helping employees to obtain a work-life balance and improving their working conditions are required for both developing the current service quality and fulfilling future workforce demand. Therefore, this study examines the relation between the attitudes towards the elderly and the emotional labor behaviors of the employees who are thought to be factors affecting the work-life balance of the nursing home workers. Method: For this purpose, attitudes, emotional labor and work-life balance satisfaction of 70 caregiver and 50 nurses were measured via Kogan’s attitudes toward old people scale, emotional labor behaviors scale, and work-life balance satisfaction scale respectively. The relationships among them were analyzed through Pearson product moment correlation and hierarchical regression analysis. Findings: Results showed that attitudes toward older people have influence both on emotional labor and work-life balance satisfaction. Besides, it was found that the proportion of usage of the type of used emotional labor (surface acting and deep acting) lead changes on work-life balance satisfaction. Results: It has been shown that research on work-life balance in the field of elder care should also take into account attitudes towards older people in order to give effective results. If it is focused on the development of positive attitudes towards older people and on the attainment of deep acting skills, both the quality of service offered to seniors and the quality of life of employees can be increased