NHS Global Learners Programme — International Nurse Recruitment

The Challenge

The NHS faced a well-documented and worsening nursing shortage that domestic training alone could not resolve within the timeframes clinical demand required. Health Education England’s response was the Global Learners Programme — an ambitious, ethically governed initiative to bring internationally trained nurses into the NHS at scale, combining professional development with service delivery.

The GLP was not a standard recruitment campaign. It was a structured, government- designed programme with strict ethical parameters, multiple regulatory stakeholders, and a requirement to reach candidate populations in international markets while remaining in full compliance with the WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel. Reaching the right candidates, in the right markets, at the volume the programme required, without breaching those parameters, demanded a partner with the market knowledge and ethical framework to design and execute a campaign that HEE itself could stand behind.

Our Role

Staffbank was engaged by Health Education England’s Directorate of Global Health Partnerships to support the Global Learners Programme from its inception in August 2019. Our scope was focused on campaign design and candidate attraction — the critical upstream function that determines whether a programme of this scale reaches its target populations effectively.

Our contribution encompassed:

• Campaign strategy and design — developing a talent attraction approach calibrated to reach qualified international nurses in permissible source markets at the volumes the programme required
• Candidate attraction — deploying attraction activity across Staffbank’s websites, web portals and international social media networks to reach target candidate populations across multiple geographies
• WHO Code compliance — ensuring all sourcing and attraction activity was conducted exclusively within markets compliant with the WHO Global Code of Practice, so that HEE’s ethical obligations were protected at every stage
• Market intelligence — contributing strategic insight into international nursing workforce dynamics, source market viability and candidate conversion rates to inform programme planning and execution

The GLP operated across a complex stakeholder environment involving NHS Trusts, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), UK Visas and Immigration, and the Department of Health and Social Care. Staffbank’s role was to ensure the candidate pipeline reaching that environment was of the quality and volume that justified the programme’s infrastructure.

Source Market Strategy — Ethical Reach at Scale

Attracting nurses internationally at the volume the GLP required, while remaining compliant with the WHO Code, is a more constrained exercise than it appears. The pool of permissible source markets — countries not designated as experiencing critical nursing workforce shortages — narrows considerably once qualification recognition, NMC registration eligibility, English language baseline and realistic conversion rates are taken into account.

Staffbank’s approach to source market selection for the GLP drew on decades of operational experience across international nursing markets in the GCC, Southeast Asia, Africa, the Philippines, India and beyond. This was not desk research — it was the application of relationships, market presence and registration pathway knowledge built over more than 30 years of active international healthcare recruitment.

Source markets were assessed against the same structured criteria applied across all Staffbank international healthcare mandates:

• WHO Code compliance — attraction activity directed only at markets not designated as critical shortage nations
• NMC registration eligibility — assessment of qualification frameworks against NMC registration requirements for overseas nurses
• English language baseline — targeting candidate populations with a realistic pathway to meeting IELTS or OET requirements
• Candidate volume and quality — prioritising markets with sufficient qualified candidate depth to sustain a programme of this scale without exhausting supply

Outcomes

The Global Learners Programme delivered more than 800 nurses into the NHS — one of the largest single international nursing mobilisation programmes in NHS history at the time of delivery.

Staffbank’s candidate attraction infrastructure and WHO Code-compliant campaign design were a material contributor to that outcome. In the words of the Direct Recruitment Manager at NHS England’s Directorate of Global Health Partnerships:

“Global Career Networks Ltd (now Staffbank) supported our efforts by providing advertising and candidate attraction services to the GLP via their websites, web portals and social media networks. This allowed the GLP to reach our key markets while maintaining adherence to the Code of Practice for the international recruitment of health and social care personnel. The GLP delivered over 800 nurses into the NHS, and much of this success has been as a result of the support we have received.”
— Johnathan Nicolson, Direct Recruitment Manager, Directorate of Global Health Partnerships, NHS England

Why It Matters

Delivering candidate attraction at the scale the Global Learners Programme required — across multiple international markets, within strict ethical parameters, in coordination with a complex government-led stakeholder environment — is not an exercise that a generalist recruiter can replicate. It requires an established international market presence, a deep understanding of which source markets are ethically permissible and operationally viable, and the credibility to operate as a trusted partner to a government body with its own reputational obligations.

Staffbank brought all of that to the GLP from day one. The programme’s outcome — over 800 internationally recruited nurses successfully placed into the NHS — is a statement of delivery at a scale that very few recruitment partners anywhere in the world can point to on a single programme.

It is also a demonstration of what becomes possible when ethical recruitment practice and operational scale are treated not as competing priorities, but as complementary ones. Compliance with the WHO Code was not a constraint that limited what the programme could achieve. It was a design principle that made the programme credible, sustainable and replicable.

Credentials Relevant to This Programme

• Delivery partner to Health Education England’s Directorate of Global Health Partnerships from programme inception, August 2019
• Carter Wellington Global Recruitment Group (a Staffbank division) is an NHS framework-approved supplier
• Founding signatory to the WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel
• Full compliance with the UK Code of Practice (CoP) for International Recruitment
• 30+ years of operational experience across international nursing workforce markets including the GCC, Southeast Asia, Africa, the Philippines, India, Australia and the UK
• Direct working knowledge of NMC registration pathways for internationally trained nurses

Letter of recommendation held on file from Johnathan Nicolson, Direct Recruitment Manager, Directorate of Global Health Partnerships, NHS England.