How’s the past 12 months been for you? Ok, maybe don't answer that.
As well as working as a freelance consultant, I also work part-time for an NHS organisation in Newcastle. I have recently collated the results from research which has assessed how well 2019 and 2020 have gone for us in the eyes of our stakeholders.
The results - especially for communications - have been impressive.
91% of people said they had been engaged with very often or sometimes, 9% said rarely. In last year’s survey this was 72% and 21%.
93% of people said our overall reputation was very positive or fairly positive, up from 70% last year.
74% agreed that we effectively communicate about how we have acted on what we are told by stakeholders, up from 52% last year.
They are quietly earning themselves a deserved reputation of excellence - particularly impressive during pandemic
Rather than go into full detail into how this was achieved (I’m not giving away all my trade secrets when you could just hire me ;) here are three things I did to get these results:
A full organisation rebrand - Getting the basics right straight away was key. That meant a communications strategy, new website, social media plan, a regular email newsletter and more. Most importantly, where we were failing - as shown in the data from our first stakeholder survey - was in awareness of who we were, and what we did. Health is a complex landscape, and we’re one of many organisations working in this area in the city, so consistency and clarity was most important. A rebrand was the first thing I focused on; not least because there were five organisation logos knocking around on various materials and channels!
Developed proof points for all the messaging - It’s all well and good to say how good you are at providing a service but, to build trust with people, this needs to be backed up. Not only did I need to raise awareness and improve understanding of who we were and what we did, I needed to position us as experts. This meant getting the ‘how’ to back up the ‘what’; the case studies, the data and the numbers. This takes time, and an ability to understand - and translate - complex information. But it’s not just the numbers that do this, you need more.
Told authentic stories - If you’re a professional communicator you’ll know that there’s nothing like putting a human face on your communications. This was new to my colleagues who weren’t used to being the face of their services. And during the pandemic, everything changed. Office based staff ended up working in clinical settings, became experts in PPE and set-up Covid testing services. This was a great time to really showcase the impact we could have as an organisation.
Good communications done well can have great results, as proven in the research findings. Despite Covid, the past 12 months for me have gone pretty well.
“The quality and timeliness of communication has improved, despite the challenges of COVID” - one of many positive comments from this year’s research