| dc.description.abstract | Elderly care has been plagued by various changes in recent years. These changes all affect the workload that care workers experience in elderly care. Moreover, the demand for care will increase in the future, while the number of people working in care will decrease. In order to help the elderly care organizations Lyvore, De Brug and De Bilthuysen to tackle this problem, more insight into the experiences of the care staff in terms of workload is needed. Therefore, this study aimed to disclose the perceived workload of the employees of Lyvore, De Bilthuysen and De Brug and the factors that contribute to this. Therefore, fifteen semi-structured interviews were conducted among caregivers and nurses of intramural care. These interviews showed that the workload is often perceived as high by many employees. In addition, 23 factors were found that contribute to the experienced workload. Ten from these factors are considered as a novel contribution to the existing literature, because they have not been mentioned in literature before, form a more specified version of existing knowledge, or show a different effect on the perceived workload than the current literature would expect. The personnel working in autonomous teams and psychogeriatric care experience a higher workload than the personnel in self-organized teams and somatic care. The balance between job demands on the one hand and freedom of decision and energy resources on the other hand, can be seen as a predictor of the perceived workload, supporting both the Job Demand Resources and the Job Demand Control Model. Although the workload is often perceived as high, many other factors, besides the staff shortage, appear to contribute to the perceived workload. The latter may offer positive prospects for the future, in which organizations have an important role to play to keep the workload of their employees manageable. | |
