Client challenge
Ashford and St Peter’s NHS Foundation Trust had been actively pursuing a possible merger with a neighbouring NHS Trust for more than a year. The protracted merger talks caused a great deal of anxiety and low morale amongst Trust staff. In the end the Trust pulled out of the potential merger.
Consequently, the Trust decided to draw up a new Five Year Strategic Plan designed to re-assess the vision and strategic direction and ensure that the organisation, staff and local and national stakeholders, were engaged and aligned around Trust priorities and the actions needed for success.
The challenge to Verve was to:
- Achieve buy-in from staff and volunteers for the Five Year Strategic Plan
- Kick off the process of raising staff and volunteer moral
- Present the Trust as an employer of choice.
Our solution
Our first step was to carry out a perception audit which took views from nursing staff, volunteers, staff and patient Representatives, support staff, the Board Chair and the Chief Executive. That provided insight and direction for our approach.
We suggested an “It Takes A Team” approach to the Strategy staff launch campaign. This focused on ensuring that all staff and volunteers were viewed as equal to one and other in ensuring the smooth running of the Trust and excellent patient care.
We ran three staff and volunteer co-design events to ensure buy-in for the approach and the supporting collateral. We shaped the launch campaign by producing:
- An updated, previously internal logo, which has now been adopted as the Trust’s overall external facing logo, voted on by staff
- A Trust “people” focused Strategy Document
- An infographic style poster, in a range of sizes
- A simple DL size leaflet, which included the infographic style poster as a centre spread
- It Takes A Team wall-panel posters
- We created and delivered a video – It Takes A Team which focused on “Margaret” our patient and how it takes a Trust team of – cleaners to cooks, porters to volunteers, backroom staff to security staff, doctors, surgeons and nurses – to deliver an excellent patient journey and successful outcomes
- A communication plan and messages to compliment the theme and the collateral.
The result
Our work helped to successfully land the new Strategy with the staff, especially the nursing staff and support staff. With the launch event capturing staff from the Trust’s three hospitals; leaflets and Strategy brochure going like “hotcakes”; an excellent reception for the video and the wall panels thoroughly appreciated by staff and patients alike and, ensured that staff felt involved and heard.