A qualitative analysis of nurses' perception on the impact of management style on retention in hospitals

The aim of this research work is to assess nurses’ perception on the impact of management style on retention in hospitals. The management style of a nurse manager can influence the staff nurse intention to either remain in an organisation or leave. With the high rate of turnover recorded in hospitals presently, managers can help increase retention rate if they apply management styles that impact positively on retention. From research it is obvious that the transformational and democratic styles are more preferred but the dominant style is the task-oriented transactional style which is known to impact on retention negatively. In an attempt to investigate the impact of management style on staff nurse retention, the researcher made use of a qualitative, semi-structured interview on a face to face basis. Using open-ended interview questions and previous literature, Data was collected from 6 nurses working at the inpatient unit of the hospital and analyzed. The result shows that retention can be achieved if the management styles used by the nurse manager is one that encourages employee engagement, trust, respect and participation in decision making. These were seen to have positive impact on staff nurse satisfaction and retention. The transformational and democratic styles were identified as having a positive impact on retention and recommendations were made for Human Resource Managers to consider the need for a continued mentoring program for nursing staffs and leadership training program for managers to learn basic management skills and how to apply these styles effectively in varying situations. Finally, the outcome of nurses’ retention should also be evaluated in the near future to ensure that the training and mentoring programs have been successful