Trust initiated a campaign to raise awareness of wellbeing services and improve health outcomes for staff members, increasing self-referrals for services, thereby enhancing job satisfaction

Outline:

The NHS workforce is united and driven by a passion and commitment to care. Our staff care for our service users, they care for families, they care for each other. But research showed that they weren’t caring for themselves. Our Trust has a range of excellent wellbeing services available to help staff be happy and healthy at work. Unfortunately, these resources were underutilised.

The #allofus wellbeing campaign was designed to raise awareness of these services to get the best value out of the investments we’d made to improve the wellbeing offer for staff. It also served to remind our staff that wellbeing is about all of us – staff who care for themselves are better equipped to care for others.

Following the campaign, 91% of staff said it made them think about their own wellbeing, and 77% said it made them aware of advice or support they didn’t know about.

Our campaign used consistent messaging, a strong brand and creativity on a small budget to make a demonstrable impact. We not only made a financial difference and increased the use of wellbeing resources but, most importantly, we did something that can’t be given a price – improved the lives of NHS staff.

Challenges:

Our own wellbeing survey showed low levels of awareness of wellbeing resources, meaning services were underutilised and therefore weren’t achieving best value for money. We have various teams offering staff wellbeing services and all were routinely requiring comms, competing for space with uncoordinated messages, which was also impacting on the value the Trust was getting out of the communications team.

To achieve the best value for money, the campaign began with cheap-to-print posters (£77 for 1,000). Domestic staff, one of our key target groups, were recruited to put the posters on toilet doors while on their usual rounds. We also chose banner stands which were portable, durable and could be rotated around sites. We also majored on ‘free’ digital materials.

The main product of the campaign was a 36-page magazine. This was carefully chosen as it had been a long time since the Trust had produced news in print, so was bound to attract attention. It was also chosen to reach some of our key audiences, such as frontline staff and ancillary workers. These members of staff are highly likely to experience conditions needing wellbeing support, but don’t routinely access digital information. Selecting these materials meant we could share information widely.

Outcomes:

The campaign had three main aims:

1. Increase take up of staff wellbeing resources (eg staff counselling, occupational health, physio, health checks)

2. Help achieve the Trust’s staff wellbeing CQUIN.

3. Deliver consistent messages to help change behaviour and attitudes around 4 key themes

Following distribution of the campaign materials, we saw a 5% increase in the perception of staff believing the Trust looked after their wellbeing. This meant that we achieved our staff wellbeing CQUIN and saved the Trust £133k.

One of our four key themes was flu. Previously, the Trust had struggled to encourage staff of the benefits of the flu jab, achieving just 33% uptake in 2016. Following the campaign, 73.5% of staff had a flu jab, saving the Trust £370,000. This shows the clear impact of the campaign around changing attitudes of staff who had long held a view that the flu jab is ineffective.

65% of people said that the campaign made them think that there was more support available for them than they realised, increasing referral uptake. This included a 48% increase in self-referrals to the physiotherapist, a 30% increase in staff counseling referrals, and a 191% increase in occupational health self-referral appointments.

Spread:

Our work has been shared at national conferences, evaluating highly. A breakout session was delivered at the NHS Elect inaugural comms and marketing conference, along with a roundtable discussion at NHS Providers comms leads network and a presentation given at NHS Improvement’s ‘how to evaluate communications’ training workshop.

It was also shared with chief executives and directors at the North East, Yorkshire and Humber Mental Health Executives network meeting. In our magazine we used case studies from real members of staff from targeted groups.

This encouraged them to pick up the magazine to spot people they knew and share it – an evaluation survey respondent commented “Loved getting something in print, made a really nice change. I took it home and passed it round my family.” In keeping with the campaign’s social media-influenced title, #allofus, we shared our work on Twitter.

It’s also been shared outside of our sector and has attracted a lot of attention from industry leaders in internal comms. A wellbeing group was also established in our low-secure services by a member of clinical staff who was involved in the development of the campaign. This has resulted in ‘wellbeing champions’ being set up across all our locations.

Value:

With just a £5k budget, it was difficult to reach all staff. However, our cleverly chosen channels meant that 93% of staff recalled the #allofus brand, with the majority seeing it on toilet doors and in the magazine.

In a survey carried out following magazine distribution, 90% of staff liked it. Feedback included: “I’m pleased the Trust invested in a magazine. It really says something about how much you care about out wellbeing at a time when finances are so pressured. I feel very privileged to work for an organisation that places this high value (both financially and metaphorically) on its staff.”

It was clear to see that clever investment in a physical printed product was meaningful to a staff group that may miss digital communications. Many staff were unaware of the services available to them, so we included a prominent ‘Wellbeing’ section on our existing intranet platform which we are able to update in-house at no cost and saw an increase in traffic on all pages, ranging from 71% to 296%.

Under the campaign banner, wellbeing info is now also included in appraisal documentation. So, all staff discuss wellbeing with their manager. What value can you put on that?

Involvement:

The comms team began by holding a workshop with HR, occupational health, staff side, facilities and frontline clinical staff representing different areas of our Trust. At the workshop we co-produced a key message grid for the overall campaign based around four key themes (chosen because they were either hotspot for sickness absence or were a key priority for the Trust): flu, musculoskeletal (MSK), stress, and lived experience.

From this we established our key challenges and opportunities for each theme, considering all the data and insight gathered. The comms team were then able to devise a multi-channel timetable of activity, and develop creatives that reflected key messages and tone.

The key messages for the campaign were developed live as part of the workshop. All staff made contributions and suggestions and agreed the messages as a united group.

A campaign brand was developed - #allofus - which tied in with our well-established co-produced Trust brand of ‘with all of us in mind’. The Trust’s visual identity is based around brushstrokes contributed by stakeholders so the campaign creative reflected this paint theme.

Given the title of the campaign, it was important that the campaign was developed collaboratively. After all, staff wellbeing is about #allofus.