Technician turnover and absenteeism in public residential facilities

Residential institutions have historically had problems attracting and retaining reliable unskilled personnel to fill technician-level positions. Even though there is little empirical evidence to support a relationship between staff stability and resident habilitation, there assuredly are such effects. A first step toward assessing these effects, and toward controlling costly technician withdrawal behavior (specifically, turnover and absenteeism), is the use of a common set of measures. The precipitants of employee withdrawal may be categorized into three areas that are subject to empirical investigation and intervention: extra-institutional factors, intra-institutional management, and factors surrounding the individual worker. Predictive research, for selection purposes, has not yielded much information that would be of use to administrators. Traditional and more recent explanations were reviewed and some direction suggested for further research.