How Did I Get Here? Enhancing Recruitment and Retention in the Water Industry

Joan Jolly, Senior Consultant, Morrison Low

We all want the silver bullet to the questions; how do we attract people to the water industry, and beyond that, how do we get them to stay? We have a great opportunity in front of us to organise our approach to recruitment and incorporate that into our new water services entities. So what lessons are there to be captured and leveraged?

As water professionals, when we ask each other “how did you get here?”, the answer is usually vague, but also equally accompanied by a deep sense of pride that we somehow are, in fact, here. It is an incredible industry, of critical importance, and it seems you must be in it before you realise that.

So, the hypothesis is that the key to attracting new talent to the infrastructure sector, must lie somewhere in the process itself; and if I can both decipher and demonstrate how I got here, are there elements of that process that are worth capturing?

Rather than a discussion over qualifications, this thought piece is an exploration into the value proposition of a technical career in the industry when it is reverse engineered; by highlighting the lessons learnt in my experience as a Young Water Professional to date, and how those lessons learnt may be valuable for enhancing recruitment and retention outcomes in the water industry.