Perceived strategies for reducing staff-turnover and improving well-being and retention among professional caregivers in Alberta’s continuing-care facilities: A qualitative study

ABSTRACT

This qualitative study explored potential factors that lead to turnover and absenteeism and how to improve well-being and retention among professional older-adult-caregivers in Alberta’s assisted living (AL) and long-term care (LTC) facilities. Four hundred and forty-seven participants aged 45–54 years were interviewed through a five-item, content-validated open-ended questionnaire. The questionnaire was self-administered in the English language and the soft copy of their responses was transferred into NVIVO version 12 software for coding. A thematic narrative analysis grounded in the “happy productive worker” theory was completed. The main themes were caregivers’ perception of the factors affecting their well-being, absenteeism, and turnover, and caregivers’ suggestions on ways to improve their well-being and retention. Participants reported that their professional well-being was suboptimal. They suggested that their employers should provide them with the needed social, psychological, and professional support, improve wages and hire more staff to ameliorate absenteeism and turnover rates.

KEYWORDS:

• Absenteeism
• caregiver
• health status
• qualitative study
• quality of life
• turnover rate

Acknowledgement

We want to express our appreciation to the managers, owners, and staff of Alberta Health Services, Covenant Health, and all privately employed (for-profit and not-for-profit) staff working in LTC and AL facilities in rural and urban areas across Alberta who participated in the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported with Covenant Health’s seed grant (Grant no: 1913).