Do Non-monetary Interventions Improve Staff Retention? Evidence from English NHS Hospitals

Melisa Sayli (), Giuseppe Moscelli, Jo Blanden (), Chris Bojke and Marco Mello ()
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Melisa Sayli: University of Surrey
Jo Blanden: University of Surrey
Chris Bojke: University of Leeds
Marco Mello: University of Aberdeen

No 15480, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Excessive turnover reduces the stock of an organization's human capital. In the public sector, where wage increases are often constrained, managers need to leverage non-monetary working conditions to retain their workers. We investigate whether workers are responsive to improvements in non-wage aspects of their job by evaluating the impact on nurse retention of a programme that encouraged public hospitals to increase staff retention through data monitoring and improving the non-pecuniary aspects of nursing jobs. Employing rich employee-level administrative data from the universe of English NHS hospitals, and a staggered difference-in-difference design, we find that the programme has improved nursing retention within hospitals and decreased exits from the public hospital sector. Our results indicate that a light-touch intervention can shift management behavior and improve hospital workforce turnover. These findings are important in sectors affected by labor supply shortages, and they are especially policy-relevant in the health care context, where such shortages have potentially negative effects on patient outcomes.

Keywords: labor supply; workforce retention; non-monetary incentives; hospital care; staggered difference-in-differences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C22 I11 J32 J38 J45 J63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 63 pages
Date: 2022-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-hrm and nep-lma
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