How to attract and retain young people on cotton farms

The ‘How to attract and retain young people on cotton farms’ project will develop evidenced based tools and strategies to attract and retain young people on cotton farms and the service industry through a series of high-quality research activities. This will include a desktop review, extensive interviews and focus groups with key stakeholders, and the development of tools and strategies that will be piloted to investigate how these interventions can alter the perception and attitudes of young people and better understand the pathways that attract, retain and develop the cotton industry workforce. Qualitative data will be collected to investigate complex issues that exist for multiple stakeholders and quantitative data to help to test the relationships between social-cognitive constructs that are theorised to influence career choices of secondary school students and young adults. The project will target students and youth, along with teachers, in cotton growing and metropolitan regions across NSW and QLD to engage a diverse cohort of young people to understand their perception of the cotton industry and expose them to interventions that support them to explore employment opportunities in the sector. Attracting and retaining the next generation workforce for the Australian cotton industry is key to the industry’s success to support the continual development and implementation of technological change, and the viability of our rural and regional communities. This project will provide a greater understanding & evidence-based recommendations to attract and retain young people in the cotton industry. Following project implementation, interventions that raise the aspirations of young people to enter the cotton industry and attract a workforce will have been trialled.