Your new job may come with a raffle ticket

The last question in a job interview at a regional hospital trust would no longer concern strengths, weaknesses or where the candidate sees themselves in five years. It would concern where the candidate sees themselves sleeping. Under a staffing scheme proposed for next year, the answer would decide whether the offer letter arrives with a contract or with a ticket.

In many cities housing costs have outpaced wages for years, and key workers such as nurses, teachers and care staff increasingly struggle to live within commuting distance of their jobs. Some employers, particularly hospitals and universities, have responded by providing or subsidising staff accommodation. Lotteries and ballots are widely used to allocate scarce affordable housing, school places and other rationed public goods, because they are seen as fairer than queues or individual discretion. Waiting lists for social housing in many countries are long and growing. Employers also increasingly consider commute distance and housing stability when assessing retention risk.

The question would read, in full: “Do you currently have a fixed address within forty-five minutes of the site, and do you expect to keep it for the duration of your contract?” Candidates who answered no would not be rejected. They would be entered. The recruiting manager would tick a box marked accommodation dependent, and the candidate would receive, alongside a conditional offer, a six-digit number in the trust's annual staff housing draw. The number would be printed on the same page as the salary, in a slightly larger font.

The trust would hold around three hundred flats for roughly two thousand staff who declared themselves accommodation dependent. Each spring the waiting list would be reshuffled by ballot rather than by seniority, on the grounds that seniority rewards those who have already survived the commute. Winners would receive a one-bedroom flat at a rent fixed at thirty per cent of salary. Losers would keep their number for the following year, plus a loyalty weighting of 0.2. A nurse who had lost four times would be almost exactly as likely to win as one who had lost five.

Ruth Calder, a radiographer at one of the pilot sites, would keep her ticket on the fridge beside the rota. “My mum asked what I'd won and I said a job, technically.” In the meantime she would drive ninety minutes each way. The scheme would allow accommodation-dependent staff to reserve a reclining chair in the former day room between shifts, for a nominal fee deducted at source. “You're not allowed to bring anything in except your lanyard. The chairs are numbered as well, which I thought was a bit much.”

The question would spread. One of the larger academy chains would put it to trainee teachers; a county council would put it to refuse crews; a supermarket group would add it to the kiosk application form, between right to work and availability on Sundays. Recruitment software would gain a new field, housing status, with three options: secure, insecure and pending draw. Candidates marked pending draw would appear on the hiring manager's screen with a small four-leaf clover beside their name. The clover would not be explained in the manual.

Because draws would take place in April, applications would cluster in March. Candidates would compare employers not by pay but by odds, and a forum for accommodation-dependent workers would publish a league table of flats per ticket for every public body in the region. One ambulance service would find that its one-in-nine odds drew more applicants than its pay award had. A subsequent budget paper would describe the pay award as “no longer the binding constraint on recruitment” and would redirect the money into four additional flats, improving the odds to one in eight.

A director of workforce at one trust would say the scheme “recognises that talent is national but rent is local”. Asked whether a public body should be running anything that resembled a lottery, she would note that the tickets are free, non-transferable and cannot be bought in multiples, which is more than can be said for the private rental market. The numbers would be drawn by the machine previously used for the staff Christmas raffle, which had been in storage since the hamper budget was withdrawn. It would be serviced, and given a line in the estates plan.

Tomas Reilly, a porter, would win a flat in the first draw and be asked to appear in the recruitment film. “They shot me getting the keys. Then they asked if I'd do it again with the ticket in my other hand, because the number wasn't in frame.” The tenancy would run for as long as he remained in a role designated accommodation dependent. He would later be offered a promotion to a supervisory grade, which is not so designated, and would be given until the end of the month to reply. He would still be thinking about it.