The Effects of the Work Environment on California Community College Counselors\u27 Professional Self-care

Healthy work environments are critical in fostering occupational self-care for helping professionals, but information on the self-care and the work environment is limited among community college counselors in California. Self-care is essential for the counseling profession in California community colleges (CCC), as it promotes wellness, which is needed in order to provide optimal services to students/clients. The lack of self-care results in counselor impairment, leading to undesirable factors (i.e., burnout, health conditions, and decrease in productivity). In educational institutions, counselors often find it difficult to maintain their own self-care. However, work environments have been shown to affect self-care at work (professional self-care). Past studies have suggested that the work environment can help counselors increase their ability to practice self-care. In this quantitative statewide study on 324 CCC counselors, it was found that the work environment was related to and predicted CCC counselors\u27 professional self-care, even when considering demographic variables. Additional findings from this research study indicated that CCC counselors’ workload had the highest relation with counselors’ daily balance. Differences in groups (e.g., demographic/contextual factors) are found among CCC counselors\u27 work environment and professional self-care, with the greatest group difference on CCC counselors’ status (e.g., tenured, adjunct). Results also suggest that CCC counselors who worked overload (if full-time) strengthened the relationship between their professional development and a sense of community in the workplace. However, overload hours worked per week showed a negative association with their sense of community. These results may be useful to community college counselors and administrators for organizational planning, policy, and advocacy of self-care-promoting work environments for CCC counselors. A limitation of the study was that the majority of participants were female, White, and tenured faculty, which may not represent those outside of this population