Aintree Hospital
Solving a recruitment crisis
Recruiting for the future
Aintree, a teaching hospital of the University of Liverpool and a tertiary centre, provides specialist services to around 1.5m residents in Merseyside, Cheshire, South Lancashire, North Wales and the Isle of Man. Working in partnership, we responded to an increasingly pressing recruitment challenge, the sustainable hiring of qualified and competent nursing staff to ease dependency on locum workers and better serve populations.
Challenge
Nurses are a critical part of healthcare and make up a big part of the profession. The industry continues to face shortages due to a lack of potential educators, high turnover, and inequitable workforce distribution, with an average of one in five nursing posts remaining unfilled. Our key challenges were:
Increased needs – With an ageing population, the additional pressure on nursing staff to provide in-depth and varied health services, more efficiently, acted as a barrier to entering the profession.
An ageing workforce – Like the populations they serve, the nursing workforce is ageing with the retirement of qualified nurses leaving a shortage of skills and experience.
Burnout – Unfilled vacancies increased the pressure on nursing staff, leading to high levels of stress and absenteeism, and high staff turnover.
Family – Adding to the shortage, the profession, for the most part, is made up of females, with nurses cutting back or leaving the industry altogether to raise a family.
Collaborate
We applied an insight-led, co-creative approach, working with the client to determine our target audiences and the key influencing factors for successful recruitment.
The client discovery sessions identified the following demographics:
- General nurse practitioner (non-specialised)
- Lowest starting age 22, upper age mid-40s
- Experienced as opposed to graduate
- Possible return to work after taking time out to care for parents/children
- Starting salary around £22,000 rising to £28,000
- Local – within a 4-mile radius of the hospital (Liverpool/Ormskirk)
Create
Using a digital-first approach we collated footage of nurses within Aintree University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, to give real and diverse voices to the nursing experience and negate the barriers to successful recruitment.
The videos were deployed across both Facebook and Twitter, using tailored copy and targeted preferences to engage directly with young leavers and retirees who may be interested in returning to the profession. The advert sought to:
- Encourage engagement, promoting the benefits of returning back to nursing
- Ease minds, highlighting the positive, inclusive team culture at Aintree Hospital
- Drive registrations of interest and access to the full job role specification
- Increase the number of relevant attendees at the recruitment event
- Increase the number of jobs given to qualified nurses
Change
Nurses' exposure to the hospital's Facebook and Twitter content had a significant, positive effect on the number of registrations to the recruitment event.
In addition, the nurses engaged were also more experienced and eligible for the role, leading to a 50% increase in recruitment event attendance and a 20% increase of nurses hired in comparison to the previous event.
Like many hospitals across the globe that struggle with nursing shortages, competition is rife to be perceived as an attractive employer. Using social media tools along with media-rich assets have proven to be integral in positively influencing nurses’ perceptions and improving employer brand image and attractiveness.
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70000
People reached
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2704
Click throughs to register interest
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50
%
Additional recruitment event candidates
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20
%
Increase on nurses hired *in comparison to previous recruitment event
