Recruitment and retention: DfES childcare

Segmenting audiences to recruit childcare workers from all parts of society

The brief

The Government's National Childcare strategy aimed to provide childcare services for up to 1.6 million children by 2004. Key to the strategy was to attract more child-carers into full and part-time employment working in early years.

We were asked to create an integrated recruitment campaign that would fulfill enquiries generated above-the-line, and encourage respondents to investigate the career option.

The solution

We developed the proposition, messages and campaign identity and generated the content, case studies, writing and photographic approach for the booklet.

The target was to recruit 100,000 additional child-carers and within six months the campaign had registered 500,000 potential child-carers. From the data collected we demonstrated 46% of all respondents looked for vacancies, 22% applied for jobs and 17% enrolled in childcare training.

"The campaign reflects the positive aspects of a rewarding profession."
Karen Smalley, Publicity Team Leader, DfES

DBA Design Effectiveness Award winner 2001
CiB Awards finalist 2000