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Assessing your needs

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There are two possible routes through this guidance.

  1. You’re starting from scratch – you acknowledge that recruitment and retention are issues that need addressing in your area and you’re looking for ways to start addressing them.
  2. You have a recruitment-focused working group already and want to assess your activity to target any areas that may need additional focus in your recruitment and retention efforts.
If you're starting from scratch:

If you're just getting started with addressing recruitment and retention challenges, the Making it Work framework offers a clear, practical path forward. Even if you don’t yet have a dedicated recruitment working group, these early steps will help you build momentum and ensure your approach is grounded, collaborative, and sustainable.

StepDescription

1

Get Curious About What’s Really Happening
Before making any changes, take time to understand the current picture. This doesn’t require a formal group—just a willingness to listen and learn.

  • Talk to people across your team or board
  • Gather existing data on vacancies, turnover, and workforce needs
  • Make space for honest reflections about what’s working and what isn’t

This early discovery work will help you identify patterns and define where to focus your energy.

2

Create a Shared Starting Point
Bring together a small group of people who care about improving recruitment and retention—even if it’s an informal gathering at first.
Encourage the group to ask:

  • What do we want to achieve?
  • What problems are we trying to solve?
  • What matters most to the people affected?

This shared understanding becomes the foundation for applying the framework.

3

Map Out the Challenges Using the Framework
Use the Making it Work principles to structure your thinking. Start small: pick one or two areas that feel most pressing or achievable.
For example, you might explore:

  • The quality and reach of your current recruitment approach
  • How supported people feel when they join your organisation
  • Whether remote, rural or hard‑to‑fill roles have unique barriers

This helps your emerging group see the whole system—not just one piece of it.

4

Choose One Early Action to Build Confidence
You don’t need a full working group to begin making improvements. Identify one meaningful action you can take now, such as:

  • Improving how your roles are promoted
  • Refreshing an existing job description
  • Asking new starters for quick feedback
  • Making small but visible improvements to induction

Quick wins build belief, engagement, and momentum.

5

Build Your Recruitment Working Group When the Time Is Right
Once you have a clearer sense of your priorities, you’ll naturally see which people need to be involved. Your working group should ideally include:

  • People with lived experience of your recruitment challenges
  • Staff involved in recruitment and workforce planning
  • Leaders who can remove barriers and enable change
  • Voices from across your organisation or area

This group will drive longer-term implementation of the framework.

6

Make Ongoing Learning Part of the Process
The Making it Work framework isn’t something you “finish”—it’s a cycle of reflection, action, and improvement. Encourage your emerging group to:

  • Review what’s working (and what isn’t)
  • Test new ideas in small, safe ways
  • Celebrate progress
  • Share learning openly
  • Remain flexible as needs change
If you have a recruitment-focused working group already:

If your board or geographical region already has a recruitment-focused working group, a useful place to start is to assess your current position against the Making it Work Framework. The Framework identifies nine strategic elements plus the conditions for success and these can be helpful in mapping the activity of your group.

Below is a simple four-step process for assessing your current position against the framework, together with an example action plan you can download to help guide you through the framework mapping process.

Four simple steps to map your group activity against the MiW Framework:

Step 

Description

1

Gather any data you have relating to the activity of the group. Ideally, your group will have a record of actions taken or will be able to collate a record of activity to date. For the purposes of analysis, this is easiest to collate in an Excel sheet such as the example action plan linked in the resource list below.

2

Once you have compiled the data available from your group, you can begin assessing this against the MiW framework. Using the Framework Mapping Tool linked in the resource list below, map each activity against the Making it Work Framework. This involves reading each of your actions and deciding which of the Framework elements it relates to. You may wish to allocate the activity to multiple areas of the framework.

3

Once you have mapped all actions against the framework, total up the number of activities against each of the ten areas and plot these into a radar chart. A radar chart highlights those areas receiving most attention as well as those areas that may need additional focus. The shape of your radar will influence how you want to focus your activity going forward.

4

If your radar indicates that there are areas receiving less attention than others, you may wish to start with activities that focus on a particular element of the framework. If your radar is broadly even you might prefer to start with activities based on their level of difficulty to implement.
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