What Drives Care Workers’ Perceptions of Wasteful Work? a Structural Equation Modeling Study of Organizational Culture and Quality of Work Life In Japanese Long-Term Care Facilities

Background: In long-term care settings, “wasteful work” refers to tasks that are unnecessary or do not create added value. Reducing such work is considered not only a strategy for improving organizational efficiency but also a way to enhance service quality by allowing care workers to focus on core caregiving responsibilities. However, the concept of “waste” involves value judgments and depends on organizational and contextual factors, making it difficult to conceptualize theoretically within human service fields. Against this background, this study examines care workers’ perceptions of “wasteful work” in long-term care facilities by identifying its content and extent and testing a hypothesized model of the organizational factors influencing these perceptions and their impact on quality of work life (QWL).

Methods: This study is based on a postal questionnaire survey conducted in 2024 using a random sample of 1,500 long-term care facilities drawn from the registry of the Japan Council of Senior Citizens Welfare Service. Of the 876 responses collected (response rate: 19.5%), data from 678 care workers were included in the analysis.

Key variables included perceived wasteful work, organizational culture (psychological safety, staff proactivity, and organizational learning), and QWL. Based on prior research, a structural model was developed to examine the relationships among perceived wasteful work, psychological safety, staff proactivity, organizational learning, and QWL. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was conducted to test the proposed model.

Findings: Among the major domains of work, perceived wastefulness was highest in collaboration and coordination tasks, followed by meetings/committees and documentation, while education and training were perceived as relatively less wasteful.

Psychological safety, staff proactivity, and organizational learning were all significantly associated with lower perceived wasteful work. In addition, psychological safety and staff proactivity were positively associated with organizational learning. Care workers who perceived lower levels of wasteful work reported higher QWL, and years of work experience were negatively associated with perceived wasteful work.

Taken together, these findings suggest that perceptions of wasteful work are shaped by organizational culture rather than solely by individual factors, and that enhancing psychological safety and staff proactivity is key to improving work processes and QWL.

Conclusion and Implications: This study demonstrates that the mechanism underlying perceived wasteful work in long-term care facilities can be explained by the pathway “organizational culture → wasteful work → QWL.” This finding highlights the importance of understanding wasteful work not merely as operational inefficiency, but as a phenomenon shaped by organizational culture and embedded in employees’ work experiences.

Based on these findings, improving work processes to reduce waste requires: (1) making work processes and roles more visible, (2) fostering an organizational climate that encourages proactive staff engagement, and (3) developing organizational structures that take into account career stages, such as age and years of experience.

Furthermore, this study reconceptualizes “waste” not merely as operational inefficiency, but as a subjective perception shaped by organizational culture and contextual conditions, thereby offering a perspective for understanding the tensions between efficiency and relational care values and providing theoretical implications for the broader human service sector.