Title: Barriers and opportunities to recruitment in mental health: the case of New Zealand

Authors: Desiree Rasquinha, V. Suchitra Mouly, Simon Hatcher, Jayaram K. Sankaran

Addresses: Team Recruitment Ltd., 79 Rockfield Road, Penrose, Auckland, New Zealand. ' Formerly with the University of Auckland. ' Department of Psychological Medicine, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand. ' Formerly with the University of Auckland

Abstract: The New Zealand (NZ) Mental Health (MH) sector has expanded rapidly over the last decade, and questions have been posed about the capacity of the MH workforce to meet demand in the forthcoming years. Accordingly, this study examines the recruitment policies, practices, barriers and opportunities of the MH sector of NZ. We find that apart from international trends such as a global shortage in the MH workforce, domestic demographic patterns pose rather unique challenges for recruitment into the sector. These include the dispersion of a thin rural population across far-flung areas and the multi-cultural nature of NZ society. Within the sector, recruitment processes differ between District Health Boards (DHBs) and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs). Given the impact of diverse entities such as education providers and the media, a sector-wide approach to recruitment into the MH workforce is necessitated. The application of the principles of business process management to recruitment is also called for.

Keywords: mental health recruitment; NZ; New Zealand; business process management; workforce retention; health personnel turnover; healthcare; multicultural society.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIR.2009.021656

International Journal of Business Innovation and Research, 2009 Vol.3 No.1, pp.70 - 89

Published online: 30 Nov 2008 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article