Turnover among new employees with physical and mental disabilities because of unsuccessful socialization in sheltered workshops.
An investigation was carried out in 13 organizations among all new handicapped employees (N = 1.948) with respect to the prognosis (before placement) of turnover and actual turnover within two years after placement. In this period 21% left, most of them (80%) were unable to become socialized, they all became jobless. In order to explain differences in turnover because of unsuccessful socialization ten explanatory variables were applied in a stepwise regression analysis: age, education, gender, marital status, handicap diagnosis, disability benefit, visibility of the handicap, compulsory placement, in-service training and prognosis of turnover as expected by rehabilitation professionals (occupational health doctors and personnel officers). The best predictor variable controlling for all other explanatory variables involved, appeared to be the prognosis of turnover (beta = .33, p less than .001). Other significant predictors are: compulsory placement (beta = .19, p less than .001), in-service training (beta = .17, p less than .001), mental handicap (beta = .13, p less than .001), disability benefit (beta = 0.09, p less than .01) and marital status (beta = 0.05, p less than .05). One may conclude that vocational rehabilitation professionals can, to a certain degree, predict the amount of unsuccessful socialization. It is hypothesized that their predictions can compete with predictive power of standardized pre-employment tests. Special attention is paid to the unfavourable prognosis of workers with a mental handicap.