Workforce strategy

Monash Health is developing a new workforce strategy, to support our current workforce and develop our teams of the future.

Our intent 

Our new workforce strategy is all about creating a culture and environment where our people thrive and deliver excellent health care. 

The development and implementation of the Workforce Strategy is one of Monash Health’s top strategic priorities:  

• We want to attract the best talent; people who share our compassion and vision 
• We want to retain our best people and help them grow in their careers and personally, to reach their full potential 
• As part of that, we want to ensure our people are engaged with the organisation and each other, inspired to find new and innovative ways to deliver care, and feel proud of their work.  

Workforce strategy pillars 

An environmental scan and consultation with you and your teams earlier this year, have helped identify several themes which will help shape the strategy. These themes have informed the four pillars of our workforce strategy: Belonging, Innovation, Leadership, and Growth. 

• Belonging – Working in supportive, healthy and safe teams with work-life balance and flexibility. 

• Innovation – Embrace cutting edge initiatives, foster innovation and drive positive change through forward thinking solutions that align with our purpose. 
• Leadership – Leaders who inspire, challenge and support high-performing teams through kindness and respect. 
• Growth – Embrace a culture of lifelong learning where curiosity thrives, to support personal and professional growth. 

Strategy on a page

Our strategy on a page captures the intent, pillars and objectives of the strategy.  

All that we do in the Workforce Strategy is underpinned by wellbeing, research and engagement.  

How to contribute

As we continue to shape the strategy and decide the key actions for future years, we will come back and seek your input at important stages.  

Along with evidence-based research on what works to attract and retain an outstanding health workforce, your suggestions will be one source of intelligence as we work towards our new strategy.  

Stay tuned for more about how you can continue to be involved and help shape what’s next. 

Strategy in action

First-year actions

While the strategy takes shape, we have already started taking action. 

Our actions for the first year are:

• Review current policies and guidelines relating to flexible working.
• Develop Health, Safety and Wellbeing initiatives that make Monash Health a happier and healthier place to work.
• Enhance organisation-wide workforce data and visibility.
• Review recruitment and onboarding workflows to define system duplication and gaps.
• Develop continuous employee engagement mechanisms that provide real-time, actionable feedback and insights to help drive our workforce initiatives. ​
• Finalise and align the initial round of professional group workforce plans.
• Research and report on innovative workforce-related projects that provide transformational benefits, enhance patient care and develop our workforce to ensure a dynamic workforce for the future.
• Implement 10 targeted workforce initiatives that focus on keeping and developing our people.
• Finalise the workforce strategy and its key actions for the future years.

Initial and targeted workforce initiatives

10 initiatives focusing on recruitment, retention, education, and helping people grow and progress their careers will help professional groups with significant workforce needs. They include:

Allied Health:

• New clinical educator roles, leading to increased allied health workforce education to stabilise and expand the workforce pipeline, retain recruits, and create additional career pathways.

Pharmacy:

• An enhanced clinical educator program​ for the development of early career pharmacists and pharmacists transitioning from community pharmacy.
• An aseptic compounding educator role​.
• Developing an advanced training residency program.

Nursing and Midwifery:

• A bespoke frontline leadership development program to upskill over 700 associate nursing and midwifery managers​.

Mental Health:

• Recruitment and retention of mental health workforce; implement strategies to retain, train and develop early career medical, nursing, allied health and psychology workforces.

Junior Medical Staff:

• Improving attraction and retention of IMGs by improving visa sponsorship practices and individual learning programs for IMGs

Imaging:

• Robust clinical education delivery enabling high quality throughout care delivery, improving employee satisfaction and retention, and creating growth pathways for our people.

Monitoring of benefits and outcomes for these initiatives will occur quarterly. Stay tuned over the coming months as we share the stories and details about these initiatives and how they are testing new ideas and models, which may be applied more broadly.