Develop workforce deployment and retention strategies

Building on the WHO's global recommendations (WHO, 2010), health policymakers need to consider which combination of interventions can be most appropriate and attractive to health workers. Job preferences vary depending on health worker type, gender, age, marital status, and location.

Different toolkits are available that can aid the mapping of workforce motivation, deployment and retention strategies based on specific characteristics of the workforce. A couple of these toolkits are presented below.

Rapid Retention Survey Toolkit provides a step-by-step approach to assess health workers' motivational preferences and design appropriate financial and non-financial incentives for evidence-based job packages to increase job uptake and retention, based on labour market needs and where there are vacancies, high turnover rates, or an under-representation of health workers.

The open-source software iHRIS Retain can help develop job incentive packages over time to consider their feasibility and affordability. In many cases, the cost of losing health workers and having to recruit new ones is more costly than providing additional incentives to existing workers. 

A case study from Namibia shows how evidence-based job packages using iHRIS Retain were developed to help the Ministry of Health to achieve a 0% vacancy rate over five years (Bailey et al., 2015).

Last modified: Tuesday, 24 May 2022, 9:02 AM