Abstract
As the health needs increased, health workforce requirements have been increased too. However,
the policy to downsize the civil servant positions implemented has made the Ministry of Public Health
failed to attract and retain health workforce into public health facilities. This study therefore aimed to assess the factors affecting the health workforce’s decision making in choosing public health facilities as
their job of choices. A Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) tool was used and that each health workforce
was asked 16 questions to choose between 2 jobs which have different attributes. The data were analyzed
by conditional logistic regression.
The findings showed that both financial and non-financial incentives played important roles in health
workforce decision making to choose their job of choices. Benefit packages that were significantly associated
to their choices of non-civil servant positions were: salary increase at 20%-40%, career advancement,
opportunity for continuing education, bonus provision, pension fund and a longer employment contract.
The results indicated that the government needs to develop the appropriate employment packages that
could attract health workforce in public sectors. The attractive benefit packages comprise: higher salary,
career advancement, opportunity for continuing education, bonus provision, pension fund and longer
employment contract. These packages could be attractive for health workforce to choose to be hired as
non-civil servants.
