Helping NHS workers stop and think about their actions

The NHS is in trouble. Alongside chronic staff shortages, ailing IT infrastructure and a lack of funding, it’s no wonder staff are disgruntled and demoralised.

Against this backdrop, we were approached by the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust to create a campaign to convey the organisation’s core values to its 20,000 staff.

The Trust tasked us with coming up with a creative campaign that captured and conveyed its values.

The target audience ranged from surgeons, nurses and physios to receptionists, admin and canteen staff who work across several sites within the Trust.

The concept needed to ‘show’ the values and behaviours that the NCA appreciates in its workforce.  It needed to make people stop and think about their attitudes and actions and encourage co-workers to think more about how they could help and support each other.

Given the broad audience demographic, we wanted to come up with something that had strong visual impact with minimal copy.

After developing several ideas, we proposed a campaign that ensured authenticity by putting real people at its heart.  We wanted to use their ‘voices’ to give examples of behaviours that had a positive impact as they went about their day-to-day working lives.

With copy approved, we worked closely with the comms and HR teams at the NCA to identify a range of individuals to front the campaign (literally our ‘poster people’!). After directing the photoshoot, our designers started to bring the creative concepts to life.

They produced a suite of assets and ideas to enable the comms team at NCA to launch the campaign and keep it fresh and front of mind in the months ahead.