Recruit and Retain: Making it Work

Attracting and keeping skilled and professional workers is a challenge shared by ‘norths’ in Australia, Europe and north America. The European Union, through its Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme, has funded a consortium of government and academic organisations in Sweden, Scotland, Iceland, Norway and Canada to implement strategies designed to improve recruitment and retention. The Recruit and Retain: Making it Work project will run until the end of 2018. 

Professor Dean Carson

Professor Dean Carson, from the Northern Institute, has been engaged to lead the evaluation work package within the project. At one level, the evaluation approach is quite simple – did the project partners have better recruitment and retention outcomes (reduced turnover, improved ease of attracting new staff) after implementation of the strategies? However, the evaluation is also looking at the spatial and temporal contexts of performance – what has been the history of recruitment and retention in the various project locations and how might conditions outside of the project impact on performance? The evaluation model will be made available to any ‘northern’ organisation to test their own performance. This project continues to build on work we have done in the Northern Territory over the past decade, with a focus on recruitment and retention of nurses, doctors, teachers, dentists, accountants, and engineers amongst others. You can follow the progress of the European project at https://www.facebook.com/rrmakingitwork/.

Demography North