suggest a reply to this post. have thought$-$provoking replies that support their arguments and discussion. provide a personal example or experience.

Within public sector healthcare, there is very little in the way of reward or $$bonuses$$ available for staff, however over the past several years the industry has suffered with staffing shortages and high vacancy rates across my organization. To address the issue, the Ministry started to offer recruitment and retention incentives to try and entice workers to the smaller more remote communities in BC$.$ In theory this would assist the sites with the highest vacancy rates and provide stability to communities that are struggling. In practice it has exacerbated the issues at some of our hospitals, as the metrics used only looked at vacancy rates of certain positions, and not the proximity to other locations. This created an outflow from stable hospitals that weren$$t included in the retention incentive to support a facility that was struggling. Basically, robbing Peter to pay Paul. It didn$$t address the root cause, which is a severe lack of actual staff trained to fill the roles. Now this has assisted in some more remote communities, but there are several rural cities and towns where a $30$ min drive in either direction will get you to a different hospital or health center, and it was an easy choice for many staff to increase their commute but $10-15$ min a day to receive a significant increase in pay.

Its now very difficult for government to change the approach, as they have buy$-$in and support from the unions$-$ which hold immense power $$ so the assumption is the program will continue to expand to regions that historically had stable staffing at a significant cost.

I would be curious to know one would support a bonus in that system $-$ do you have any ideas? I$\text{'}$m intrigued! The phenomenon of "robbing Peter to pay Paul" aptly describes how addressing vacancy rates in one area led to destabilization in others.