Workload and work stress association with midwives’ job performance in Ghana: The moderating effect of organisational support

Background Although organisational social support systems have been shown to provide buffering effect on workload and stress association with productivity, this phenomenon remains under-explored in the midwifery profession. Drawing on literature, we hypothesised and tested the moderating effect of organisational social support on the workload, work stress and job performance linkages among Ghanaian midwives. Methods A cross-sectional survey design using a structured questionnaire to collect data from 219 midwives across referral hospitals in a regional health system. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, correlations and hierarchical multiple regression models performed from SPSS and backed by simple slope tests. Results We found that workload is associated with increased stress levels in midwives (β = 0.186; P ' 0.01), while job performance is negatively significanlty influenced by both workload (β = -0.436; P ' 0.01) and work stress (β = -0.132; P ' 0.05). We further found that coworker support might be less helpful to midwives as it strengthens the positive interaction between workload and work stress (β = 0 .06; P ' 0.05). Both supervisor support and coworker support, however, produced statistically significant moderating effects on work stress interaction with performance (P ' 0.05). Conclusion The findings have practical managerial and policy implications for strengthening midwifery workforce job performance by minimising risk factors of stress and using supervisor support as buffer.