Staff turnover and wastage in the personal social services: A statistical approach

Turnover and wastage rates among social work staff are high and subject to variation between local authorities. Such high rates have a number of deleterious effects on the quality of social work, and consequently on clients, on the costs of delivering personal social services and on the general administration. This study investigates staff turnover (leaving a job) and wastage (movement of leavers out of social work) in the personal social services. Hypotheses about the association between staffing problems (turnover, wastage, and vacancies) and causes or correlates are tested by employing suitable statistical techniques, and using appropriate weights for standardisation of crude turnover and wastage rates. The correlates (personal characteristics and location of work) are found to produce important variations in the probability of individual turnover and wastage. Causes such as staffing ratios, attractiveness of a local authority, expenditure on social work, and indicators of the volume of social work have significant "push" or "pull" effects on the leaving of social work staff.

It should be noted that parts of this study have been published as follows :

"Labour turnover", Management Research News, 1981, 4, pp.19-21.

"Who leaves social work", British Journal of Social Work, 1981, 11, pp.421-444.

"Investigating labour turnover and wastage using the logit technique", Journal of Occupational Psychology, 1982, 55, pp.129-138.

The above papers could not have been completed without the cooperation of Dr. Martin Knapp (Deputy Director of the Personal Social Services Research Unit at the University of Kent at Canterbury) and Spyros Missiakoulis (formerly Research Fellow in the Personal Social Services Research Unit).