Toward Sustainable Human Resource Development: The Influence of Workplace Friendship on Early Childhood Educators’ Retention Intention, with Workplace Well-Being and Job Embeddedness as Parallel Mediators

Within the context of sustainable educational workforce development, enhancing the retention intention of early childhood educators is a critical issue for ensuring educational quality and long-term talent sustainability. This study surveyed 200 early childhood educators in Taiwan and developed a parallel mediation model to examine how workplace friendship influences retention intention through workplace well-being and job embeddedness. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were conducted using AMOS 24.0. The results indicate that workplace friendship does not exert a direct effect on retention intention; however, it significantly enhances workplace well-being and job embeddedness, which in turn fully mediate the relationship. These findings suggest that workplace friendship must be transformed into psychological and structural resources in order to promote retention, highlighting the applicability of the JD-R framework within the early childhood education context. The study responds to the needs of sustainable human resource management by identifying workplace friendship as an initial social resource that fosters well-being and embeddedness, thereby contributing to talent sustainability and the stable development of the educational system.