Recruitment and retention of appropriately skilled staff is an ongoing challenge for men’s behaviour change (MBC) providers. An evaluation of Relationships Australia NSW’s (RANSW) Building Stronger Families program identified a range of challenges in retaining a culturally diverse workforce, which led our Research & Impact team to conduct a further study to understand this issue across our men’s behaviour change workforce. As the largest provider in NSW, RANSW sought to identify opportunities to improve MBC workforce recruitment and retention, that may be applied across the sector more broadly.

We will present findings from our focus groups and interviews with men’s behaviour change caseworkers, facilitators, team leaders and service managers, identifying individual, relational and structural opportunities for change. Our results will highlight existing good practice as well as a range of possibilities for reform, including issues around professional development, employment precarity, and the need for recognition of the additional value that culturally diverse employees bring to the sector. We will discuss the broader implications for the effectiveness of men’s behaviour change interventions, in being able to sustain people in complex, psychologically demanding work.