“What I thought was the dream job was a little different than I had expected”: A qualitative study exploring the turnover of IPS employment specialists

Background: Individual Placement and Support (IPS) is an evidence-based vocational rehabilitation program that helps people with severe mental problems to obtain and maintain paid jobs. Turnover of IPS employment specialists is a scarcely studied subject that can undermine the effectiveness and implementation of the intervention. Objective: This study aimed to explore and describe the experiential factors and processes that shape IPS employment specialists’ decisions to quit. Methods: Braun and Clarke thematic analysis was used to analyze interviews of former IPS employment specialists, who worked during the early implementation phase in Northern Norway. Results: A number of negative and positive experiential factors and processes were found to shape IPS employment specialists’ decisions to quit their jobs. A single theme captured our findings ‘The decision to quit for IPS employment specialists is a gradual process consisting of draining factors outweighing nourishing factors’. Conclusion: To retain IPS employment specialists in the early implementation phase, it is not enough to rely on hiring well-fitting individuals. Instead, prospectively developing interorganizational contexts, timely identifying and addressing work environment problems, while nurturing the strengths of individual workers can be helpful in decreasing turnover rates of IPS employment specialists.