Investigating labour turnover and wastage using the logit technique

The aims of this paper are twofold: to identify those personal characteristics of trainee social workers, and their locations within a social services department, which are associated with high propensities to change jobs and to leave social work altogether, and secondly to describe and apply a relatively new and very powerful analytical technique to effect this identification. This technique—polychotomous logit analysis—is particularly well suited to the study of labour turnover and wastage and generates a number of interesting and important policy conclusions. Differences in the likelihood of leaving (‘turnover’) and in the subsequent destination of leavers (‘wastage’) were found to be significantly associated with the sex, age, educational and professional qualifications, length of service and workplace location of social work trainees. These findings have a number of policy implications which should be of relevance to personal social services planners and employers. We recommend the use of the polychotomous logit technique in subsequent research on labour turnover and wastage.