The challenge
Providing equitable access to essential services in non-metro areas has long been a challenge for the NSW government. Financial incentives are often used to attract professionals to regional areas — but listening to key workers who have stayed long term revealed that while people come for the money, they stay for the community.
In June 2021, the NSW Secretaries Board commissioned the Department of Regional NSW (DRNSW) to address this challenge of attracting and retaining essential workers to regional areas. The initiative was to begin with a specific focus on the employees of the NSW Departments of Education, Health, Communities and Justice, including Policy and Family and Community Services, and Fire and Rescue.
Our involvement
As part of the NSW government's vision for regional NSW communities, the Department of Regional NSW engaged TACSI to design a community and place-based initiative to achieve three key outcomes:
Attract essential workers to regional towns and communities in NSW.
Provide support to essential workers and public service professionals and their families who choose to move to regional NSW.
Enable them to stay longer by engaging them in the local community.
Our approach
Working with the Department of Regional NSW’s Essential Worker Attraction Program team, TACSI designed an approach to:
Build the capability of the program team in human-centred design and community engagement.
Meet with community members, employers and essential workers to learn what’s working and to listen to those closest to the challenge in NSW.
Design and build the Department’s early concept of a 'concierge' service and then bring it to life to test and improve it with three diverse regional, rural and remote communities.
Prepare the Department’s program team to pilot the service across eight locations across various regional NSW locations.
Introduce the concept and engage the nominated pilot locations
Stage 1: Building team capability and aligning on the approach
We began by running a series of training modules to develop the DRNSW team capabilities in human-centred design and community engagement. The theory, foundations, principles, methods and case studies were put into practice as TACSI worked side-by-side with DRNSW staff on location and modelled ways of putting people at the heart of design and social innovation.
In parallel, we began inviting geographically, socially and culturally diverse communities to work alongside us to design, test and improve our concepts.
Stage 2: Listening to those closest to the challenge
We planned two visits (or learning loops) per location and scheduled our trips and engagements in Walgett, Wagga Wagga and Bega.
We met with diverse community members individually, in group sessions in community centres and attended various community welcome sessions for new community members. Research methods included semi and unstructured interviews, site visits and conversations in informal locations such as by the river or over pizza in people’s homes.. ‘Meeting people where they are at’ is a phrase we use often. This can be geographically, conceptually or culturally — so meeting people in a place they are already comfortable can allow their stories and insights to go deeper, faster in the time you have with them.
1. A shift from designing for short term outcomes to encourage essential workers to stay longer in place; to long term opportunities where a positive experience in place might influence a place’s reputation and likelihood of return or referral
2. A shift of assumptions around the need for case management approach and concierge service for individuals by individuals; to a collaborative approach and holistic community and employer welcome experience
3. A shift from the creation of value for a place based on individual outcomes to value based on collective, community engagement with the experience
4. And we changed the title of the project from the Local Connector Service to The Welcome Experience.
Stage 3: Make, test and improve the concept and service experience
TACSI worked with the DRNSW team to build out a series of paper prototypes including:
A service map describing the full ideal journey and the people and processes that might support that
Ideas toolkit for local connectors and communities to pick up and draw from
Local connector role — a profile of a paid employee to coordinate the service and welcome experience
Welcome Kit Template to support people to land in place
Preparation Pack Template to help people with advice from the locals and meet a few friendly faces
Conversation Tools to support relocating workers and their families
Essential workers, employers and community members also highlighted small but intentional things that a place can do to set up positive loops to attract and retain key workers. Actions to establish these loops are woven throughout the iterated service experience.
We have heard from our work across regional Australia that a key aspect to bring to life in the relationship between community members and the community or place they’re going to build their life in, is the value a community places in its unique ecological/environmental, social/cultural, economic, and other produced capitals.
We took inspiration from New Zealand’s Holistic Recovery Model (Norman & Others, 2006) (also referenced in the Fire to Flourish project) which puts community collaboration, cooperation and coordination at the centre of places leading their own recovery across natural, social, economic, and built environments.
With this front of mind, we sought to celebrate the unique context, strengths and potential of communities like Walgett, Bega and Wagga Wagga through engagement with local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander elders, leaders, community organisations, schools, health care professionals, emergency workers, businesses, non-government or charity organisations and local councils to in each location.
Stage 4: Prepare to pilot the service
After testing and improving the newly-named Welcome Experience in three locations, a key next step to take was to pilot and test some key assumptions of the design. TACSI and our long term participatory and developmental evaluation partners, Clear Horizon, shaped a measurement, evaluation and learning framework to test The Welcome Experience as it moved to the next stage of live testing across eight locations, including Walgett and Bega, where we were able to prototype the initial concept and give it more shape and structure.
Stage 5: Introducing the concepts and engaging pilot locations
After prototyping The Welcome Experience, we worked alongside the Department’s program team to establish all the backend aspects needed to set up a pilot program. This involved:
Detailing the pilot implementation details to enable teams within the Department and select communities to develop a Program Guideline. This included detailing the role narrative of a ‘Local Connector’, understanding the different kinds of local organisations (e.g. Local Council, NGO, a business entity, or a collective, etc.) who could host the ‘Local Connector’
Creating a program implementation guide with the Department’s program team.
Delivering co-planning sessions in Coffs Harbour, Corowa and Bega, where we worked alongside the Department’s program team to model what the co-planning stage could look like to further build their capability. We met diverse members of the local community, from the local delivery team, emergency services, teachers, local community organisations, and more. Each location observed a rhythm of grounding the gathering in purpose; celebrating local strengths, programs and people; pilot measurement and evaluation (with local delivery team only); recruitment challenges; and how The Welcome Experience might work in the local community.
Throughout the sessions the locals identified and celebrated the unique and diverse strengths of their community. As the conversation opened up we discussed challenges around connecting into the local community, and people who had been through that experience shared what worked for them, creating connections between different programs and people that helped them in their journey.
By approaching the sessions from a strengths based perspective the community rapidly opened up and began co-creating the foundations of The Welcome Experience with each other. As challenges arose, from housing to making friends, so did solutions from the locals in the room as they shared their own experiences and the experiences of others.
The community sessions invited the participating community members to adapt The Welcome Experience to be unique to their place and shift their understanding of it from being yet another government service or initiative or program, to a celebration of their community that welcomed new members in and embraced them as their own.
To complete the project and share our learning more widely, TACSI developed a learning experience on “what it takes” to do work with communities in place.
Our impact
The Department and the program team are currently piloting The Welcome Experience in eight regional NSW locations ahead of a planned broader roll out in 2024. The service is integrated with Government recruitment and attraction programs across NSW.
One of TACSI’s greatest aims is to ensure that social innovation continues with teams and communities we work with. Knowledge and capability building is part of every project we do. So we’re proud to have developed community engagement and participation capabilities for DRNSW staff through some tangible mindsets, principles and practical methods and tools to use in their work.
We know that the applied learning experiences of making, testing and improving concepts and service, concept or program designs with communities in place is changing the way NSW Government engages in place-based initiatives.
“In late 2022 we had the pleasure of working with TACSI to consult with regional NSW communities on how to better welcome new Essential Workers when they arrived in town for work. TACSI managed much of the face-to-face interactions in Walgett, Wagga Wagga and Bega during this data gathering phase of program design. TACSI’s enthusiasm and dedication to this project was an inspiration to many. The skilled and empathic way they engaged with locals yielded amazing insights about ways to help newcomers feel like they belong, and in turn, support them to stay in regional locations longer. As well as seeing the value of this work for The Welcome Experience, we also think that this type of engagement with real people on the ground is invaluable to government, and their efforts to create real positive impact for communities. To this end, we have recorded an account of it, including its process and outcomes in the publicly available report, Community Participation in program design: The Welcome Experience. We hope that this is a useful resource for our government colleagues in NSW and around the world when they are designing new services to benefit communities.”
Lee, Deputy Directory of Regional Workforce and Inclusive Communities, Department of Regional NSW
What would we like to see next?
There is plenty of innovation happening as smaller towns seek to attract health workers to their community. We’d love to see a DIY or open-source version of The Welcome Experience available for all regional, rural and remote communities across Australia so that they can test and trial what works for them. We can imagine this thriving in passionate communities — of which there are so many in Australia!