Improving the Recruitment Pathways and Retention of the Local Refugee Population
On 19th April, a workshop led by ACH for Bristol North Somerset South Gloucestershire health and care system (under the auspices of the Integrated Care Board) to discuss Equality Diversity and Inclusion workforce issues, through the lens of recruiting and retaining refugees and migrants. Keep reading to find out more about our workshop and discussions from the day.
ACH’s #rethinkingrefugee campaign is an exemplar of the type of work that can be done together, to identify practical solutions to improving the recruitment of refugee communities which leads to an improved sense of belonging of recently recruited refugee staff and resulting in improved retention at this time of acute staffing shortages within the health and care sector.
The workshop challenged the narrative that refugees are ‘charity cases’ to the fact that refugees have skills and qualities that are of benefit to organisations. Often employer engagement with the refugee communities around recruitment can seem tokenistic and surface level, as the holistic needs of individual refugees (I.e. psychological, pastoral and socio-economic) aren’t satisfactory considered. This half-day workshop was an opportunity to explore recruitment and retention challenges in the NHS, health, and care sectors as they impact on refugees. ACH talked about the barriers refugees face in terms of employment and retention and suggested ways in which English learners can be recruited into an organisation, developed and progress.
Our workshop was an opportunity to do some ‘blue sky’ strategic thinking of what a perfect solution would be and come up with practical operational steps that can be taken at both system and individual employer levels.
Improving the Recruitment Pathways and Retention of the Local Refugee Population workshop ran for 2.5 hours and consisted of presentations offered by staff ACH, Monira Chowdbury, Head of Equality Diversity and Inclusion at North Bristol Trust, Brunelcare (an employer that has worked with ACH previously around inclusive recruitment), Dina Elzain and Najla Mohamed (who both have lived experience of navigating the UK labour market) and CEO, Dan Green from Bridges for Communities.
"The workshop was very insightful and brought a lot of good discussion within breakout groups as well as in the open Q&A’s as to how we can break down the barriers faced when going through recruitment processes. Simple things such as where we advertise posts, the wording of posts and reframing job descriptions are some barriers that could be developed to name a few. The data information provided was very reflective and more information on different refugee groups, lived experience stories and their main working situations, permissions and what support is available would be useful in future workshops to help further understand what can be done to support retention. The atmosphere of the workshop was brilliant with many different organisations around the table openly asking questions to help to develop better practice, while sharing what has worked well in their own organisations." -Calais Hutchins, EDI Project Officer, NHS Bristol
The workshop has resulted in very positive conversations with NHS staff, with many stating that they would consider new ways of recruiting so that it is accessible and inclusive for refugees and migrants. There has also been interest in exploring a pilot project co-produced with ACH to recruit, retain and progress refugees in the workplace. Conversations are now ongoing – watch this space!
