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Staff shortage in the UK National Health Service has a long history, but is widely predicted to become acute over the next decade. Falling enrolment rates in health professional training and restrictions to migrant labour recruitment have brought the, traditionally neglected, issue of staff retention into sharp relief. The purpose of this paper is to represent the first large scale systematic appraisal of the relative salience of recognised headline drivers of employee exodus from the NHS.

The data were collected from an opportunity sample of 1,594 health professionals, managers and administrators employed by the NHS. Participants completed a paired ranking task (Case V method of paired comparisons, Thurston, 1927) to determine the relative importance of eight widely cited reasons for exit. The item set was derived from focus groups conducted as a component of the wider study.

Findings revealed almost universal consensus regarding the primacy of shortage of resources, job demands and time pressure. Pay was ranked lower than predicted. Flexible working arrangements do not presented as a key solution, and there is no support for claims of generational differences.

Survivor population effects could constitute a source of sample bias, i.e. all participants were current NHS employees. It is possible that those who remain may be more resilient or hold different dispositions to leavers. Thus, comparisons by age and grade may not be comparing like with like. Tapping respondent beliefs about the actions of peers can embody some degree of inaccuracy and attribution bias. However, effects can be considered to operate as a source of common, rather than systematic, error across the demographics compared. The medical and dental sample was too small to give confidence in detected differences.

Findings challenge the claim that wider availability of flexible working hours will significantly reduce exit rates. Pay, being a source of dissatisfaction, does not constitute a key push variable in itself, rather its salience reflects the effort reward-imbalance produced by rises in job demands.

Staff shortages in the NHS represent a threat to: public well-being – waiting lists and demand for care; the well-being of who continue to work in the NHS – job demands and resources; the employment prospects of staff who leave involuntarily, e.g. on grounds of incapacity and threats to health and well-being – extending to impacts on their dependents.

Issues of staff retention within the NHS are topical and under researched. The findings provide an up to date picture of the relative influence of headline drivers of early exit from the NHS. The study draws upon a more diverse and comprehensive sample of NHS employees that any other known previous studies of early exit. Findings are of potential international relevance to other State health systems. The authors believe this to be the largest (sample) known application of the method of paired comparisons.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss contemporary approaches to workplace health and well‐being, articulating key differences in the intervention architecture between public and workplace health contexts and implications for intervention design.

Contemporary practice is discussed in light of calls for a paradigm shift in occupational health from a treatment orientation to an holistic approach focused on mitigation of the causes of ill health and the promotion of well‐being. In practice, relatively few organizations have or seem able to engage with a broader perspective that encompasses challenges to health and well‐being associated with contextual organizational drivers, e.g. job design/role, workload, systems of reward, leadership style and the underpinning climate. Drawing upon insights from public health and the workplace safety tradition, the scope for broadening the perspective on intervention (in terms of vectors of harm addressed, theory of change and intervention logic) is discussed.

There are important differences in scope and options for intervention between public health and workplace health contexts. While there is scope to emulate public health practice, this should not constrain thinking over intervention opinions. Increased awareness of these key differences within work organizations, and an evidence‐based epidemiological approach to learning has the potential to strengthen and broaden the approach to workplace health and well‐being management.

The authors argue that approaches to workplace well‐being interventions that selectively cross‐fertilise and adapt elements of public health interventions offer promise for realising a broader change agenda and for building inherently healthy workplaces.

We discuss workforce management, related to those aged 50+ , in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Korea. With international competitiveness becoming increasingly crucial, retaining the ‘right’ mix of employees to achieve strategic organisational goals is likely to determine organisational success. However, we argue that workforce management is not only influenced by organisational-level strategy but also by national institutional and sectoral policies. Decisions on whether and how to retain older workers are therefore (co-)determined by institutional incentives and barriers to doing so.

We find that British and Korean governments have legislated in favour of extended working lives and, hence, the retention of ageing workforces. In the United Kingdom, pension eligibility ages are being increased and in Korea mandatory retirement age has been raised to age 60. While changes to the UK pension systems leave individuals with the (financial) risks associated with extended working lives, the Korean government tries to protect individuals from financial hardship by enabling them to remain longer in their primary career. However, whether and how government regulation plays out depends on how organisations react to it. The Korean discussion, in fact, shows that there might be leeway: organisations might continue to externalise their employees early framed as honourable, or voluntary, early retirement, which might not be in the interest of the individual but very much in the interest of the organisation. It therefore appears as if the retention of ageing staff is not (yet) considered to be of strategic importance by many organisations in these countries.

OUR Fifty‐eighth Volume begins with this issue of the LIBRARY WORLD, a fact which causes a few reflections and suggestions. It was the earliest “free” journal in librarianship in this country and was designed to represent the experiments in all forms of library service which then were developing with increasing momentum, as well as ideas, aspirations, reasonable grievances, planning, furnishing, technique, personalia—indeed everything that one librarian would desire to communicate to another and to discuss with him. Our earliest contributors were the men best known in their time and, as was inevitable in 1898, were all young. Through more than half a century THE LIBRARY WORLD has appeared regularly and, except in the recent conditions created by the “printing dispute”, punctually. The same principles control us today. The same hospitality is offered to anyone of any age who has anything to say.

“WE come now to another aspect of the question, and it must be admitted that the resource and ingenuity of the opposition have left nothing unnoticed. This is the common and constantly repeated assertion that novels are so cheap that every working man in the country can buy all he needs for less than the annual library rate. This statement was first made some years ago when publishers commenced to issue cheap reprints of non‐copyright novels at 1s. and 6d. each. Previous to this the halfpenny evening paper had been relied upon as affording sufficient literary entertainment for the working man, but when it was found to work out at 13s. per annum, as against a library rate of 1od. or 1s. 4d., the cheap newspaper argument was dropped like a hot cinder. We doubt if the cheap paper‐covered novel is any better. Suppose a workman pays £20 per annum for his house, and is rated at £16, he will pay 1s. 4d. as library rate, or not much more than 1¼d. per month for an unlimited choice of books, newspapers and magazines. But suppose he has to depend on cheap literature. The lowest price at which he can purchase a complete novel of high quality by any author of repute is 3d., but more likely 4½d. or 6d. However, we will take 3d. as an average rate, and assume that our man has leisure to read one book every fortnight. Well, at the end of one year he will have paid 6s. 6d. for a small library by a restricted number of authors, and it will cost him an additional 4s. or 5s. if he contemplates binding his tattered array of books for future preservation. Besides this, he will be practically shut off from all the current literature on topics of the day, as his 3d. a fortnight will hardly enable him to get copyright books by the best living authors. With a Public Library at his command he can get all these, and still afford to buy an occasional poet or essayist, or novel, or technical book, well bound and printed on good paper, such as his friend who would protect him against an iniquitous library rate would not blush to see on his own shelves. It seems hard that the working men of the country should be condemned to the mental entertainment afforded by an accumulation of pamphlets. Literature clothed in such a dress as gaudy paper covers is not very inspiring or elevating, and even the most contented mind would revolt against the possession of mere reading matter in its cheapest and least durable form. The amount of variety and interest existing among cheap reprints of novels is not enough, even if the form of such books were better. It is well known to readers of wide scope that something more than mere pastime can be had out of novels. Take, for example, the splendid array of historical novels which have been written during the present century. No one can read a few of these books without consciously or unconsciously acquiring historical and political knowledge of much value. The amount of pains taken by the authors in the preparation of historical novels is enormous, and their researches extend not only to the political movements of the period, but to the geography, social state, costume, language and contemporary biography of the time. Thus it is utterly impossible for even a careless reader to escape noticing facts when presented in an environment which fixes them in the memory. For example, the average school history gives a digest of the Peninsular War, but in such brief and matter of fact terms as to scarcely leave any impression. On the other hand, certain novels by Lever and Grant, slipshod and inaccurate as they may be in many respects, give the dates and sequence of events and battles in the Peninsula in such a picturesque and detailed manner, that a better general idea is given of the history of the period than could possibly be acquired without hard study of a heavy work like Napier's History. It is hardly necessary to do more than name Scott, James, Cooper, Kingsley, Hugo, Lytton, Dumas, Ainsworth, Reade, G. Eliot, Short‐house, Blackmore, Doyle, Crockett and Weyman in support of this claim. Again, no stranger can gain an inkling of the many‐sided characteristics of the Scot, without reading the works of Scott, Ferrier, Galt, Moir, Macdonald, Black, Oliphant, Stevenson, Barrie, Crockett, Annie Swan and Ian Maclaren. And how many works by these authors can be had for 3d. each? The only way in which a stay‐at‐home Briton can hope to acquire a knowledge of the people and scenery of India is by reading the works of Kipling, Mrs. Steel, Cunningham, Meadows Taylor, and others. Probably a more vivid and memory‐haunting picture of Indian life and Indian scenery can be obtained by reading these authors than by reading laboriously through Hunter's huge gazetteer. In short, novels are to the teaching of general knowledge what illustrations are to books, or diagrams to engineers, they show things as they are and give information about all things which are beyond the reach of ordinary experience or means. It is just the same with juvenile literature, which is usually classed with fiction, and gives to that much‐maligned class a very large percentage of its turnover. The adventure stories of Ballantyne, Fenn, Mayne Reid, Henty, Kingston, Verne and others of the same class are positive mines of topographical and scientific information. Such works represent more than paste and scissors industry in connection with gazetteers, books of travel and historical works; they represent actual observation on the part of the authors. A better idea of Northern Canada can be derived from some of Ballantyne's works than from formal topographical works; while the same may be said of Mexico and South America as portrayed by Captain Mayne Reid, and the West Indies by Michael Scott. The volume of Personal Reminiscences written by R. M. Ballantyne before he died will give some idea of the labour spent in the preparation of books for the young. The life of the navy at various periods can only be learned from the books of Smollett, Marryat and James Hannay, as that of the modern army is only to be got in the works of Lever, Grant, Kipling, Jephson, “John Strange Winter” and Robert Blatchford.

A distinction must be drawn between a dismissal on the one hand, and on the other a repudiation of a contract of employment as a result of a breach of a fundamental term of that contract. When such a repudiation has been accepted by the innocent party then a termination of employment takes place. Such termination does not constitute dismissal (see London v. James Laidlaw & Sons Ltd (1974) IRLR 136 and Gannon v. J. C. Firth (1976) IRLR 415 EAT).

THE following list of errata, adjustments and revisions of the actual classification itself, represents all that it has been deemed necessary to note in the way of such alterations, and the changes have been suggested by the experience of users and the discoveries of various librarians. Those who use the scheme should have the changes noted in an interleaved copy of the book, and others may find it desirable to do likewise, pending the appearance of a revised issue which will be published in the near future. Most of the changes are self‐explanatory, and their meaning can be ascertained at once by reference to the S.C. itself. Suggestions and notes of errors will be very gratefully received, as it is only by the vigilance and practical working of many minds that a classification scheme can ever arrive at even reasonable accuracy and completeness.

IN this issue we conclude our symposium on Modern Library Planning, and although it is not as complete as we could wish, it has certainly proved to be one of the most interesting subjects we have been able to deal with in recent years. We regret that lack of space has prevented us from including some interesting details about new libraries, and that we have laid ourselves open to the criticism of over‐crowding. We hope, however, that we shall be able, from time to time, to add further material as the occasion warrants. We had hoped to obtain a description of the Central Library Extension of the Hull Public Libraries, but this has, unfortunately, proved impossible. Lancashire County Library, too, is constructing four new branch libraries, an account of which we should have liked to include. Plymouth may be mentioned as still another library of which the material was not ready in time for our symposium. Also, we are sorry to have had to omit some of the illustrations which librarians have been kind enough to offer us for reproduction. In spite of these omissions, however, we have been able to gather together much that is new and interesting in modern planning, and one of the points that is well worth notice is the willingness of librarians to experiment in new ideas, even if conservatively.

We have from time to time suggested that librarians should pool experiences in regard to annual estimates, but there seems to be no enthusiasm for the suggestion. If library work is to develop it must be by gently progressive finance, and nothing helps one librarian more than to be able to point to another who is progressing. We all tend to wait upon one another. In such a matter as salaries, a librarian circulates his colleagues to learn what they are getting; and library authorities almost invariably ask, “What is paid at So and So ?” This is a vicious circle which cannot be broken unless librarians in consultation can reach a Standard. Perhaps the active London and Home Counties Branch of the L.A. will give a lead since the L.A. itself is too busy to do so.