Health Workers: Building and Motivating the Workforce

Economics predicts that employers will employ workers as long as the additional value of their services is at least as great as the cost of employing them, and workers will work if the rewards are of greater value than those accruing to other uses of their time. If key professionals are in short supply, higher salaries will be needed to attract them. Workers will invest in training if they value higher future incomes and more interesting work above the costs of income lost during training and of fees paid for training programs. This chapter focuses on how health systems might build and improve HR capacity.