The Knowledge library

Retention

Why Would I Go There? Motivating Workers to Take and Keep Jobs in Rural Areas

Given the complexity of the social, professional, and economic factors that influence motivation, how do institutions make rural job postings more attractive? While many recognize that salary is an important factor, other characteristics of a job—such as better living or working conditions, supportive supervision, opportunities for continuing professional development, career advancement, networking, and even public recognition—can improve a worker’s sense of purpose and productivity. Identifying and offering the right incentive package to workers can result in a win-win situation, with benefits for both the worker and the community served. To address this issue of job attraction and retention in the health sector, CapacityPlus has helped ministries of health and NGOs answer these questions by using a rapid discrete choice experiment, a rigorous survey method that identifies the trade-offs that workers would be willing to make between specific job characteristics. Garnering statistical evidence of what motivates workers provides policy-makers with the needed information to develop more cost-effective job incentive strategies. This article originally appeared in the December 2012 issue of Monthly Developments Magazine (www.monthlydevelopments.org).

Designing Evidence-Based Incentives to Attract and Retain Health Workers Using the Rapid Retention Survey Toolkit

This eLearning course produced by CapacityPlus’s HRH Global Resource Center is based on CapacityPlus's Rapid Retention Survey Toolkit: Designing Evidence-Based Incentives for Health Workers. The course trains participants on how to use a rapid discrete choice experiment methodology to design evidence-based incentives to attract and retain health workers in rural and remote areas.

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Designing Evidence-Based Incentive Strategies for Health Worker Retention

Many countries struggle to attract and retain sufficient numbers and types of health workers to provide quality services in rural and remote areas. Ministries of health often rely on external partners to develop the evidence base for formulating retention strategies, use less rigorous methodologies, or forego data altogether when making policy decisions. Presented at the Second Global Symposium on Health Systems Research in Beijing on November 1, 2012, this poster describes two new tools—the Rapid Retention Survey Toolkit and the iHRIS Retain costing tool for retention interventions—and related results from Ministry of Health surveys in Lao People’s Democratic Republic and Uganda.

iHRIS Retain

iHRIS Retain is an open source tool to cost health worker retention interventions. People living in rural and remote areas need more skilled health workers to care for their communities. However, attracting and retaining health workers to serve in these areas is a challenge. Developed by CapacityPlus in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO), iHRIS Retain is based on the WHO’s 2010 global policy recommendations on retention, which offer guidance on the different interventions in the areas of education, regulation, financial incentives, and professional development that can increase access to health workers in remote and rural areas through improved retention. iHRIS Retain guides users through the costing process step by step, collecting necessary data, calculating the costs of interventions, and comparing costs to available funding. The resulting information can then be used to develop retention strategies at the district, regional, or national level.

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Toward Development of a Rural Retention Strategy in Lao People’s Democratic Republic: Understanding Health Worker Preferences

This technical report presents the results of a discrete choice experiment (DCE) conducted by the Lao People’s Democratic Republic Ministry of Health, in partnership with the World Health Organization and CapacityPlus, using CapacityPlus’s rural retention survey toolkit. The DCE surveyed health professional students and health workers practicing in rural provinces to investigate their motivational preferences for potential strategies to increase attraction and retention in the country’s rural and remote settings.

Retention

What will motivate health workers to stay in rural areas? This brief presents an overview of the issue of retention along with suggested actions, key considerations, and resources. Also available in French and Spanish.

Determining Priority Retention Packages to Attract and Retain Health Workers in Rural and Remote Areas in Uganda

In Uganda, attracting and retaining health workers in rural and underserved areas has proven difficult. Positions staffed by the Ministry of Health in many of these areas remain 50% vacant. The Ministry of Health is committed to pursuing a package of strategies to make rural postings more attractive. One important step in determining which package of strategies will be most effective is to estimate which strategies health workers themselves most prefer. To this end, the Ministry of Health, in partnership with CapacityPlus, conducted a discrete choice experiment survey among current students in health training programs as well as health workers practicing in rural districts to investigate preferences for potential attraction and retention strategies. The results constitute an important input to the policy-making process related to the identification, costing, and selection of possible retention interventions for implementation. Read more »

Health Worker Retention and Performance Initiatives: Making Better Strategic Choices

Proposes a shared approach to retention and performance improvement based on existing motivation theories and experience in the international health field.