Corrections Ramps Up Recruitment Efforts To Attract More Frontline Staff

Work to attract more frontline staff has ramped up with Corrections launching the next phase of its recruitment campaign.

“Our frontline staff are heroes. Working at Corrections can be challenging and confronting, but it’s also incredibly rewarding. Our staff make a real difference in their communities, helping keep the public safe and change people’s lives for the better, and we’re working hard to recruit more people who want to do the same,” says Neil Beales, Chief Custodial Officer.

“It’s no secret we’ve faced significant staffing pressures over the last 18 months, and we’ve been actively recruiting more people to the frontline. Our first recruitment campaign, which ran in 2022 and 2023, helped us hire over 1,000 new Corrections Officers.

“Frontline staffing levels are increasing, but we still need to do more to ease the pressure our people are facing on a daily basis, especially in prisons.”

Recruitment and retention will remain a top priority for Corrections this year, alongside improving staff safety.

“Our staff are our biggest assets, so we have to keep finding ways to hold on to that experience and expertise, especially in such a tight labour market.”

“We’ll be focused on investing in the capability and training of our frontline staff, as well as making sure people have a clear pathway to build a long-term career at Corrections.”

This latest recruitment campaign, called ‘Stories from the Inside’, is fronted by investigative reporter and host of the Guilt: True Crime podcast, Ryan Wolf, who helps share the perspectives of frontline staff. It includes television, online, and billboard advertising with four different stories from two Corrections Officers, a Probation Officer, and a Nurse.

The first advertisement aired on television on Sunday 4 February. Data from this day showed that the television ads reached approximately 241,308 people in the target audience of people aged 25-54.

“A lot of our work goes unseen, so it’s great being able to tell real stories about what our staff do in prisons and the community. These stories are a just a few examples, but hopefully they give potential recruits a better of idea of what a career at Corrections looks like,” Neil says.

Additional work underway to recruit and retain staff includes strengthening our recruitment processes, improving our onboarding processes, implementing new rosters to provide staff with better work/life balance and help avoid fatigue, and initiatives to improve staff safety.

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