Nursing recruitment in Australia's largest hospital

All hospitals in Australia are challenged by a limited capacity to compete for scarce nursing talent against a backdrop of diminishing national workforce supply. This study seeks to ascertain what factors motivate nurses to apply for positions, what factors influence them to leave their current positions, and what attractors can be put in place to entice them to work in a hospital environment. The participants in this study were all applicants for any type of nursing position at Liverpool Hospital in western Sydney applying between February and September 2011. A questionnaire was distributed to the participants to capture their views and opinions on what attracted them to apply for a job at the case hospital. The questionnaire was designed to measure whether some or all of the attractor strategies devised by the Hospital were successful in attracting them to apply for a position. A total of 480 surveys were distributed to job applicants applying for positions at the Hospital (across all nursing classifications). Of these, 195 were completed and returned, giving a response rate of approximately 41%. The results from the survey provided support of the use of attractor strategies in influencing applicants to apply for a position. The evidence from this research supports the development and implementation of e-marketing strategies as one of the tools in attracting staff, and demonstrated that the development of the Liverpool Hospital website, and a specific recruitment website, was an effective tool in marketing the various attributes of the Hospital that may be effective in attracting staff. The results from this research show that factors which improve employee satisfaction (which is normally associated with retention) can specifically attract applicants to an organisation. These include options such as career progression opportunities, professional development, making one's job more challenging or stimulating, a supportive workplace culture and mentoring and support. This research identified a number of factors that might be generalisable to other hospitals when trying to attract staff to their facilities and, as such, there are a number of potential implications for similar public hospitals.