Keeping Them Happy: Job Satisfaction,Personality,and Attitudes toward Disability in Predicting Counselor Job Retention

Abstract

Employee retention was studied in 48 counselors working at a summer camp for children and adults with disabilities. We hypothesized that attitudes toward persons with disabilities, personality characteristics of counselors, job satisfaction, and previous counselor experience would predict whether counselors would elect to return to work the following summer. Although experienced counselors who had previously worked at the camp were more than twice as likely to commit to returning as new counselors, a regression analysis demonstrated that only job satisfaction at the end of the summer camp predicted commitment to return as reported six months later. Counselor narrative satisfactions and dissatisfactions with the work environment provided suggestions as to how employers might improve job satisfaction.