Reviewing and fine-tuning comms tactics and approaches as we head into autumn/winter make all sorts of sense. So this new case study and resource might be helpful to you.
by Oliver Tipper
Hello,
My name is Oliver, and I’m the Head of Communications at Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (LYPFT) – a small but mighty mental health and learning disabilities provider trust.
I’ve been inspired to write my first blog post for comms2point0 following some recent professional development and leadership sessions which have helped me reflect on the whole COVID experience, where we are now and where we’re heading next.
Like many leaders of in house comms teams, I’ve been managing our pandemic response comms for the last six months. And I’m tired. But away with your tiny violins, I know this doesn’t make me special.
Like many of you, I’ve:
Enacted my business continuity plan,
Remodelled my team’s service offer (including introducing on call rotas),
Seconded extra resource in to help (thank you!)
Stepped some things down, stepped some things up,Found new ways of working remotely (some good, some not), and
Generally rolled with the punches and kept going.
So well done to all those who’ve done the same (and more) to keep the comms torch alight. In case somebody hasn’t said it yet; we couldn’t have done it without you!
Where are we now?
We’ve had our summer of socially distanced love. We’ve done a bit of eating out to help out, played and watched a bit of sport, dragged our languid kids out on day trips, been on our staycations and dutifully returned to the office (so long as you buy a Pret sarnie on the way).
At LYPFT we’re now facing what I’m calling the ‘triple threat’. So that’s:
Managing the pandemic response (lockdown 2.0 here we come)
Whilst at the same time resetting, restarting and recovering our services
And now we’re restarting all the projects, campaigns, programmes and other business as usual stuff you can throw a swab at.
Thought you were busy before? Think again!
I’m not ashamed to say in the early stages of the pandemic response I had a few wobbles, said a few daft things, sent a few bad emails, and needed to sit down and have a word with myself. Basically, I needed a plan and the resource to deliver it.
And, according to staff feedback from a crowdsourcing exercise we did in the summer, the team done good!
91% of staff who responded said they felt more connected to the Trust thanks to our comms work, and 93% of respondents felt our daily Coronavirus briefings were informative.
We also set up weekly video conferences with our chief exec Dr Sara Munro. It was so important for staff to see and hear from someone they trusted, with one respondent commenting:
“Many more common folk have seen Sara on zoom and had a chance to interact. It is hugely empowering to know that senior leadership team is in touch with what matters to the frontline staff and responsive to our feedback.”
But now were are facing an overwhelming challenge, impossible to deliver with the existing resource, especially as my extra pairs of hands are now back doing their overwhelming day jobs.
So, I needed a new plan.
Where next?
Thankfully my fab team manager Melissa Mumby and I carved out an afternoon to do some planning. We set our planning horizon to six months – given where we are and where we are going I cannot think past six months at the moment.
And we came up with a good old fashioned grid.
Now, I know this blog is called the triple threat, but there’s a very important fourth dimension to this as well, which I’ve called Communications Service Development. Things like:
Professional development and team building,
Content, channel and process improvements, and
Comms policy and procedure reviews.
So, four dimensions plotted onto a grid with deliverables ranked in terms of gold, silver and bronze for priority and resource allocation.
The result?
Well, it’s a bit crude but it’s really helped us shape our thinking, planning and resourcing. Here’s a blank copy which you might find useful if you need a place to start.
Another helpful task has been to complete a COVID second wave / winter pressures business continuity plan. Our emergency planning lead shared a template and it’s helped us use our experience of phase one to plan for phase two i.e. what we’d stop, start and manage differently.
Having a team time out in August was also a really worthwhile experience. I was inspired to do this following a leadership workshop our Trust ran in July. It was led by NHS leadership guru Professor Michael West and was entitled 'Compassionate Leadership - Leading Beyond the Crisis’. You can watch his presentation on our You Tube channel.
We did an anonymous survey asking for feedback so we could celebrate the achievements, address the issues and figure out what we wanted to stop, start, continue and do differently.
The main outcomes were:
To invest in personal and professional development,
To make our meetings more purposeful, and
To create a suite of self-help, know-how/show-how resources to enable our colleagues to be better communicators, especially whilst we’re a little distracted. We’re hoping they will be great longer term investments.
So, I will leave you with this famous paradoxical quote from 34th US president Dwight D Eisenhower:
“In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable.”
In other words, you cannot write a dedicated plan for every eventuality, but it is worth preparing for the chaos ahead.
Oliver Tipper is head of communications at Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
Image via pingnews.com
