IFGH 2012: Branding- A Marketing Strategy Sets the Stage for Health Worker Retention at ICDDR, B

Authors:Mujahid H.


Author Affiliations:International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR, B)

Option 2– Lessons from the field; project and programme evaluations; and syntheses or analyses Presented as – Poster

Issues:

Workforce retention is one of the important challenges for the organization. In a country like Bangladesh where there is an acute shortage of qualified health work force, the retention becomes the biggest challenge for the public and non-profit organization. How the marketing brand model has been replicated as employer brand management model, that helped ICDDR, B in setting the stage for workforce retention, will be presented.

Description:

Organizations are developing their retention strategy using various models and tools. Amongst the other tools, branding has been considered as one of the retention strategy. At ICDDR, B, taking the lesson from consumer brand, we build the employer brand to motivate our internal customers, i.e. employees, in order to binds them with the organization. . The marketing principles are used to develop branded employment product which induces affinities and loyalty of health workforce to bind with the organization and assure retention.

Lessons learned:

Borrowing the marketing tools of branding and applying the principals in the field of people management, how an organization has been successful in reducing the workforce turnover; the lesson learned at ICDDR, B can be a model for other organization. By analyzing different data on staff turnover and exit interview responses, it was found very low turnover rate considering the industry average.

Next steps:

The findings will show how an organization has been successful in reducing the staff turnover; can be a model for other organization.