Nursing staff turnover: does leadership matter?

Abstract

Purpose

The aim of this paper is to study the relation between leadership behaviour of nursing managers and staff turnover with respect to the intervening variables “work climate” and “job satisfaction”.

Design/methodology/approach

Three different well‐documented questionnaires were used to assess perceived leadership behaviour, work climate and job satisfaction. Data on staff turnover were collected from a computerized follow‐up system. Different statistical analyses such as correlation analyses, regression analyses and analyses of variance were performed in order to explore the relations.

Findings

The results show strong correlations between leadership behaviour, work climate and job satisfaction. No significant direct relation between leadership behaviour and staff turnover was shown. Staff turnover shows statistically significant correlations with the job satisfaction variable “feeling” (p≤0.005), and the work climate variables “challenge” and “playfulness” (p≤0.001).

Practical implications

In order to limit staff turnover, decision makers should put effort into recruiting and retaining managers that perform very well according to the needs of staff. Managers that are both relations‐oriented and production‐oriented, can manage change and are able to stimulate the staff with challenges have the best opportunities to achieve low staff turnover.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors' knowledge there is no study published that explores the influence of leadership behaviour, including the dimension “change”, on staff turnover in relation to intervening intrinsic factors of job satisfaction and creative work climate in nursing.

Citation

Sellgren, S., Ekvall, G. and Tomson, G. (2007), "Nursing staff turnover: does leadership matter?", Leadership in Health Services, Vol. 20 No. 3, pp. 169-183. https://doi.org/10.1108/17511870710764023