Our Leadership: On the right wavelength

Following three recent additions, our Executive Leadership team is poised for success. With our strategic focuses and Wavelength core values in mind, the team share their hopes and plans for the next 12 months – and beyond.

With Wavelength quickly approaching 25 years of operation in 2024, it’s a great time to reflect on our rich history. When we review Wavelength by the numbers, we see how far we’ve come; how many healthcare companies we’ve matched with doctors, and can only imagine how many patients have been impacted along the way.

Our Executive Team

Our Founder/Director Claire Ponsford and CEO Chris Riley are backed by a wealth of experience, with Paul Darby and Crystal Howell leading the Recruitment and Regulatory & Migration teams; Nigel Williams heading up Finance; Melissa Corr leading People & Culture and Operations; and, in a first for the Australian medical recruitment industry, Katrina Haddad as Chief Experience Officer.

It starts from within

The saying ‘happy staff = happy customers’ certainly rings true at Wavelength, where the last six months has seen six staff members return to the company to take on new roles, while our employee engagement score sits 91%, which means our people are motivated to deliver excellent service. With more than 15% of our staff tenured for over 10 years, our stable, positive workforce makes a difference to our network and the healthcare community. In FY24 we’ll continue our journey to curate an exceptional people experience guided by our values, that enables personal and collective success, and builds skills and capability for continued growth.

Our consistent positive Net Promoter Score shows that loyalty and longevity extend to our clients and candidates. Focusing on customer centricity is paramount, and the appointment in June 2022 of a Chief Experience Officer shows our ongoing commitment to the customer experience. “The foundation for Katrina’s appointment was to be the agency who puts clients and doctors at the centre of our conversations and everything that we do,” says Chris Riley, CEO. “This is about changing what we do internally to ensure we are doing the right things externally, and it’s been tremendously encouraging to achieve our recent world-class NPS of +63, with 9/10 candidates reporting satisfaction with our service.”

Our relationships set us apart

Paul Darby and Amber Derby-Davies at the AIMA Conference 2023

At Wavelength, we approach each introduction to every client and candidate as the potential foundation of a long and fruitful partnership. Over 85% of the clients we began working with almost 25 years ago still partner with us today. And our locum doctors keep coming back; our top 5% of active locums have each completed an average of 35 placements in the last five years. with us, with many tipping over 100 placements since they first started. We treat our clients and candidates as individuals, and forge partnerships that last. “We spend time getting to understand the specific needs of each hospital or clinic that we work with and the communities they support. We work hard to ensure we have a steady supply of locum doctors available for short-notice, hard-to-fill shifts, as well as partnering with clients that require ongoing long-term locum support from return doctors to ensure continuity of care,” explains Paul Darby, GM, Hospital Services Locum. “On the candidate side, our aim is to help each doctor we work with throughout their entire career – through locum and permanent; from RMO to Registrar to Specialist. This is why we’re so well placed to help both candidates and clients.”

As we emerge into this post-pandemic world, we know that face-to-face interactions are so important for trust and relationship building. This year, we’ve experienced the renewed energy at industry conferences, and we’re feeling the buzz of being able to connect with our networks in person. “Large annual conferences as well as small local events provide us great opportunities to meet with candidates we already work with and to further expand our talent pool,” Paul explains. “On the client side, we’re investing in more face-to-face interactions, as I believe we can much better understand the communities and challenges of our regional and remote clients when we visit in person.”

Customer Centricity is Key

Our investment in 10 innovative projects across technology, people experience, and customer experience ensure we’re focused on continuous improvement and setting the foundations for scalability. The goal is to be able to deliver more to our customers and clients. “We’re investing in a lot of test-and-learn projects,” Katrina Haddad, CXO, explains. “We’re working on projects that leverage AI and natural language processing, as well as digitising more touchpoints with our candidates.”

Finance GM, Nigel Williams, adds, “The focus on quality and to deliver to the highest level is really apparent; it’s not just words on a website. The entire team is focused on ensuring that both our candidates and clients get the best experience.”

Positioned for success

With almost 25 years in business, and an enviable employer and candidate network, we understand the wants, needs, frustrations and obstacles of doctors and healthcare organisations. Right now, our clients are finding they’re needing to do more with less, in short timeframes, to meet patient demand.

“Our objective is to make their life easier and ultimately improve patient outcomes,” Chris says. “Minimising downtime in healthcare facilities is critical.”

Something that sets Wavelength apart as an ideal partner is our 25 years’ experience in helping clients overcome skills shortages by securing talent from overseas. “Our expert international recruitment team and regulatory and migration service is experienced in sourcing the best quality internationally trained doctors, navigating the college, AHPRA and visa assessment processes and guiding our candidates and clients every step of the way,” says Claire Ponsford, Wavelength Founder and Director. “The combination of our locum and permanent doctor recruitment offering, alongside our executive search capability through Ccentric, make us unique in the healthcare space. We can design medical workforce solutions for our clients while sourcing high-quality healthcare leaders that can build the health service of the future.”

While clients’ needs are changing, so are those of our candidates. Post pandemic, trends show that doctors’ employment drivers reflect those of candidates in other industries, and we’re well-placed to help meet those needs too. “I'm really excited for us to evolve our approach to candidates and clients by taking more of an advisory role,” says Crystal Howell, GM of GP, Hospital Permanent and Regulatory & Migration Services. “Every doctor has a unique journey, and by opening up the conversation beyond the immediate horizon, our consultants have the resources, and portfolio, to guide doctors through their entire career. This approach will help us create personalised experiences for our doctors, while gaining insights to offer the right talent at the right time for our clients.”

Get to know our leadership team here.

Find out more about how we support healthcare employers here.