New Resource Spotlight: Health Workforce Productivity Analysis and Improvement Toolkit

Many countries are striving to meet the demand for family planning, end preventable child and maternal deaths, and achieve an AIDS-free generation. The health workforce is critical for ensuring access to high-quality services in order to improve health outcomes. While increasing the number of health workers where there are shortages is essential, it is equally important to improve the productivity of the existing workforce and make service delivery more efficient.

CapacityPlus’s new Health Workforce Productivity Analysis and Improvement Toolkit describes a step-wise process to measure the productivity of facility-based health workers, understand the underlying causes of productivity problems, and identify potential interventions to address them. The interactive toolkit breaks down each step within five stages:

    Health Workforce Productivity Analysis and Improvement Toolkit
  • Stage 1: Calculate and Compare Health Workforce Productivity at Health Facilities
  • Stage 2: Understand Health Workforce Productivity Problem Types and Their Possible Underlying Causes
  • Stage 3: Conduct Qualitative Productivity Assessment
  • Stage 4: Identify Potential Productivity Improvements
  • Stage 5: Monitor Progress.

The toolkit is designed for use by a variety of national stakeholders who can assist health workers at the facility level to improve their productivity and contribute to meeting health program goals. Potential users include health program and facility managers and supervisors; district/regional/provincial health management teams; human resources for health (HRH) managers; and individuals providing technical assistance to the above.

The toolkit’s methods can also be integrated into routine supervision to support health workers in improving their productivity. Local supervisors can be instrumental in helping to understand some of the underlying causes of productivity challenges and in monitoring productivity and progress on implementation of productivity improvement interventions.

To get started, check out the toolkit and let us know if you have any questions. There is also a related eLearning course on the Global Health eLearning Center.

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