Employer of Choice

Challenge Disability Services case study

Challenge Disability Services (CDS) is one of the largest intellectual disability support services outside of metropolitan Australia. CDS employs more than 200 staff in the provision of over 600 client services in residential, day programs, respite and employment services across the North West, Central West and Hunter regions of NSW. CDS also supports over 125 employees with a disability in its vocational services.

The challenge

Challenge Disability Services recognised the competition it faced from other industries in the attraction and retention of quality staff. A sustainable workforce was key to CDS remaining able to continue its sensitive delivery of effective services to its clients. In 2008, CDS embarked upon securing its future workforce through three ambitious initiatives:

• Recruitment for the future program, targeting Gen Y candidates
• Recruitment for Aboriginal services, targeting Aboriginal candidates
• An attraction and retention program, focused upon positioning CDS as an Employer of Choice
   

The campaign

To become the area’s Employer of Choice, CDS introduced new Work Life Balance (WLB) practices across the organisation, and embedded them into its Workplace Agreement. Features of this program include:

• Flexible working
• Negotiated extra leave
• Paid maternity leave
• Family friendly policies

CDS Flexible Working arrangements enable employees to work from home or work flexible hours, as required. Its Negotiated Extra Leave arrangements afford all employees the right to purchase up to 2 weeks extra leave per year. This allows staff up to 6 weeks paid annual leave per year.

CDS Paid Maternity Leave provides 6 weeks full pay (or 12 weeks half pay) to parents caring for their newborns, while Family Friendly Policies, allow infants into the workplace for feeding purposes.

The results

The introduction of attractive employment benefits has enabled CDS to reduce the loss of valuable skills from its organisation by reducing turnover. In 12 months, this has fallen by 3%. It has also allowed it to increase its attraction, seeing a boost in the numbers of applicants per vacancy by 10%. Challenge Disability Services recently become an award winning Employer of Choice, endorsed by the Tamworth Regional Development Corporation.

For additional information on candidate attraction and retention contact our Talent Advisors.