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Rural and regional is one of the areas that you've all told us is a critical factor. We need
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to structurally think about how we support people moving to the regions because as we roll out as
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our demand for recruitment and for specialist workers is only increasing, we need to look at what
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are not only the incentives but how do we support people to make those kind of transitions. We've
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also got strong interest, 30 percent of survey respondents said they were interested in moving
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so, you know, there's potential to kind of harness that and strengthen that.
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One of the positive things
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is that we've heard that one in five millennials are considering moving to a regional area in the
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next two years. With the drivers being impact of covid, wanting a bigger place and better work-life
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balance, so they're the top three drivers. So that whole sort of tree change, sea change trend is
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appealing to candidates, particularly that younger cohort so that's a positive thing in the future.
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Unfortunately it's it's quite often seen from candidates that it's the metro's poor cousin you
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know, it's a second choice to do that, it's going to impact your career you're going to be isolated
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you're not going to have connections so these are the key things that we need
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to change that messaging around. In fact it's it's the opposite, candidates who
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have experience working rurally and regionally have reported that actually it strengthens their
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career, the work is often more varied and because sometimes the lack of the support
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services that they might have in a metro situation means that their skills become
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much more rounded and in depth, so that's really something that organisations need
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to sort of perhaps focus on when you're looking at your job adverts and employing people.
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One of the areas though can also be lack of housing, it used to again be that one
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of the drivers is that housing affordability in rural and regional compared to metro but that is
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changing and we're finding that you know that is becoming a bit of an issue rents are increasing
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but also you know being able to try and find accommodation. So again as an employer that's
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something that I urge you to think about, you know get your real estate contacts in your towns,
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you know what can you help with regards to candidates, you know that are moving if they're
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moving with their families. That's a really big important thing is consider the families
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and partners of the people that are going to be moving. So you know if you can provide a structured
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orientation and support package for the family help introduce them to the community, access to
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services, schools for their kids, that sort of thing, anything like that that you can work on will help
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attract candidates into rural and regional. The other thing to consider is the finance side.
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We have found in the past that salaries are not the same across metro and rural and regional
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and that's really really important that you look at increasing
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rural wages across the board, and if you can't increase the base salaries look at your benefits
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and things that you can offer candidates to make it an attractive offer. One last thing that I'll
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mention is a professional social isolation, that can be a barrier for candidates applying
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for roles in rural and regional. So again that's something that you need to enhance about having
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buddy systems, buddy programs so they're welcomed into the community, if they can join local sporting
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teams, community events, all of those things will help sort of assimilate them to make that
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move. So they're just some of the things that we're finding with again rural and regional.
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