An employer brand to attract health professionals to Northern Australia.

Townsville Hospital and Health Service (THHS) is part of Queensland Health and one of Australia's largest and most complex health services, providing tertiary-level, research-active care in Townsville and across Northern Australia, including rural and remote communities.

The challenge.

Hiring in healthcare is consistently one of the hardest areas in Australia, and a regional setting makes it harder again. There is a limited pool of nurses and specialists, and people considering a move to Northern Australia are often making a big decision about where they and their families will live.

The stakes are high. The specialists THHS hires are essential to the care of the community, so having the right people in those roles matters enormously. THHS also serves many locations across Northern Australia, so it needed an employer brand that worked for hospitals, rural and remote services and the many different roles in between.

What we did.

We started by listening to the people who work there. We ran executive sessions, one-on-one interviews, workshops and focus groups, and reviewed THHS's employee engagement data. We spent time with THHS's First Nations staff group and with its rural and remote health services, so the EVP reflected the whole organisation rather than the largest site alone.

We developed an EVP brand architecture from that research, using some of THHS's existing research, and presented it to the executive team and then to the board for approval. The people we shared it with were excited by it.

From there we built the employer brand and the tools to use it:

• Employer brand guidelines, including a new brand identity and look and feel for attracting talent
• Careers page wireframes and copy
• Employee blogs and a suite of testimonial quotes from staff
• Recruitment marketing campaign plans for the key roles THHS most needs to fill
• Job ad resources and new templates, plus job ad writing training for the recruitment team
• Training for recruiters on weaving the EVP through the whole hiring experience

The creative suite.

Alongside the guidelines, we delivered a full EVP activation suite of creative assets. They are built as templates, so THHS's graphic design and marketing teams can produce new job ads, banners, posters and social posts themselves, in a consistent look and feel, without starting from scratch.

The outcome.

The EVP was approved by the executive and the board, and it has since been rolled out. THHS's job ads have been updated, the recruitment team has been trained, and the creative assets have been handed over so the team can keep using them.

THHS now has a clear and consistent way to explain what it is like to work there, for people who may be considering a move to Northern Australia from a long way away.

If you're working through a similar challenge, you can read more about our employee value proposition consulting or how we plan recruitment marketing for hard-to-fill roles.

For more on the thinking behind this work, read Your job ads are the worst ads you run.