Navigating High Staff Turnover
How Organizational Hierarchy Shaped Assisted Living Facility Employees’ Emotional Responses During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13103501 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Yaqi Yuan (0000-0002-5869-7168, Georgia Institute of Technology, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 11 |
| Publication date | 2025-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Socius Sociological Research for a Dynamic World (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2378-0231 • E-ISSN: 2378-0231 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/23780231251350173 |
| OpenAlex | W4412174821 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 51 |
Assisted living facility and nursing home staff faced high virus exposure, long hours, and limited resources while caring for vulnerable residents during the COVID-19 pandemic. This led to a turnover crisis, as many long-term care facility employees left due to burnout, safety concerns, and emotional exhaustion. Framed within emotional labor theory and social structural theories of emotions, this study examines the emotional responses of frontline and managerial staff in assisted living facilities (ALFs) during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the impact of high turnover rates. Based on qualitative interview data from semistructured Zoom and in-person interviews with 29 employees at “Harmony House” in Oregon, this study highlights the hierarchical nature of emotional experiences in the workplace among frontline workers, middle management staff, and administrators in ALFs, shaped by high turnover rates during the pandemic. The findings also show that ALF employees attributed turnover to different factors based on their organizational roles. Whereas administrators often attributed turnover to the pandemic or generational traits, frontline and middle management staff emphasized persistent issues, such as low pay, understaffing, and safety risks. These divergent perspectives showcase how institutional hierarchies shape emotional understandings of workplace challenges, advancing the literature on emotional labor and organizational dynamics in long-term care
2019-20 coronavirus outbreak · Business · Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19 · Hierarchy · Job satisfaction · Pandemic · Political science · Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2 · Turnover intention · Emotional Labor in Professions · Healthcare professionals’ stress and burnout · Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior · Medicine · Psychology · Social Psychology · Internal Medicine · Virology
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Factors Associated With Mental Health Outcomes Among Health Care Workers Exposed to Coronavirus Disease 2019
Labors of Love
Emotion Management in the Workplace
The Managed Heart
The Sociology of Emotions
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Emotion Transfer, Emotion Regulation, and Empathy-Related Processes in Physician-Patient Interactions and Their Association With Physician Well-Being
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Emotional Labor and Health Care
From Familiar Faces to Family
On Becoming a Qualitative Researcher
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It’s a Dignity Thing”
Maintaining the ‘caring self’ and working relationships
Physicians as shock absorbers
Everything Is Perfect, and We Have No Problems
Emotional Labor and Organized Emotional Care
Painful Feelings
The sociology of emotions
Sociological Theories of Human Emotions
The Sociology of Emotional Labor
The Stratification of Emotions
Care = organisation + physical labour + emotional labour
The costs of care
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |