In the last financial year the board spent $529,991 on recruitment expenses and advertising, up $200,000 from the previous year, but board chief operating officer said this year's amount could be higher, because the board has more vacancies.
At the end of February the board had 134.5 full-time equivalent positions vacant.
Since some staff only work part-time, the board is seeking more people than this number.
In the seven months to the end of January the board had spent $245,263 and a further $166,260 on relocation expenses.
Between July 2005 and the end of January this year the board spent $1,841,349 on recruitment and relocation.
This amount included $145,000 for the Otago and Southland boards' Healthdownsouth recruitment campaign launched last year in the United Kingdom (of which Southland is to pay $45,000).
Mrs Blake said these amounts were large and would obviously be smaller if the board had fewer vacancies, but it also had to be remembered that the board's provider arm had a budget of $264 million and staff costs made up more than $170 million of that.
Recruitment was not cheap. A lot of costs were incurred through using agencies, which charged a percentage of annual salaries, often as high as 15%.
There was no way around such expenses "unless we had people queueing up to come into the organisation - and wouldn't that be nice?''
Relocation expenses could also be as high as $30,000 for a person moving from the United Kingdom, and then there could be up to six weeks' accommodation costs on arrival.
Relocation costs have varied since 2005, with $326,494 spent in 2005-06 and $246,212 spent last financial year.
Mrs Blake said some jobs could be shared by three people and recruiting for one component of such a job when one person left was a difficult logistical exercise.
The board was looking more closely at how to determine what attracted people to a job in Dunedin.
Exit interviews were also important, to find out why people were not staying.
Bullying, which Mrs Blake said was no worse or better than it would be in any large organisation, had been identified by some people who had left, and board staff were looking at improving the workplace culture and how people interacted with each other.
The board had some "really good values'' in this regard and it was important that every member of staff "including myself'' lived by them, she said.
