This raises the question of defining the ‘work environment’ and more importantly, determining which aspects of the work environment seem to have the biggest influence on staff
retention. At the broadest level, the ‘work environment’ refers to ‘the tone of any workplace’ (Christmas 2008, p. 316). However, as Christmas notes, it is influenced by a wide variety of different factors, including the role of management, peer relations, patient acuity, availability ofequipment and the physical environment (Christmas 2008). Ulrich et al. (2005) studied work environment that included factors in the physical environment (such as experience of workplace injury and exposure to violence), factors related to professional practice (such as the opportunity to undertake professional development studies) and work relationships
(including relationships with managers, peers and support staff). In an acute care setting, Dunn et al. (2005) examined a wide variety of work environment factors which they
grouped into four main categories: organisational (including rostering [referred to as scheduling in the USA], staffing and workload); interpersonal (including relationships with peers and managers); structural (including features of the physical environment); and professional (including perceived autonomy and quality of care).
The Revised Nursing Work Index (NWI-R) has been used by many researchers as a measure of factors in the worke nvironment which support professional nursing practice